Adaptations

• Habitat: The physical place where a community, species, population, or organism lives
• The range of tolerance for a limiting factor can best be described as the broad range of conditions an organism can tolerate
• Warm water temperatures cause critical conditions for coral reefs
• Plants in nutrient-poor soils may form mutualistic relationships with mycorrhizae to enhance nutrient uptake.
• In cold environments, some animals enter a state of hibernation to conserve energy during periods of extreme cold
• Halophytes are plants adapted to grow in environments with high salt concentrations
• The vertical distribution of organisms in aquatic environments is primarily determined by the light gradient.
• Organisms living in environments with extreme temperatures often have specialized heat-shock proteins to help maintain cellular function.
• Biomes consist of ecosystems with similar communities due to similar abiotic conditions and convergent evolution.
• Temperature and precipitation are the main abiotic determinants of terrestrial biome distribution
• Adaptations to abiotic environments can include changes in an organism's physiology or behaviour
• Having broad leaves to capture sunlight is a common adaptation of plants in a tropical rain forest
• Having deep roots to access water is a common adaptation for plants in the dessert
• Biotic factors are living and directly influence feeding and predator and prey dynamics/systems
• Abiotic factors are non-living and influence the adaptations in a organism living in a specific habitat (convergent evolution of populations)
• high altitudes face UV radiation, low temperatures, water scarcity and frozen soil with little to no nutrients.
• level, dry habitats have high salt concentration and lack of water in the soil and need to worry about proper water conservation
• Cacti have wide spreading, deep roots with fat-storing tissues. Its structure allows it to shrivel in droughts and swell with rain with a vertical orientation that limits the sun in absorbs during day and maximizes it at night. Its leaves are spines to reduce photosynthesis, conserve water, and ward off predators. They live in desserts
• Fennex foxes are nocturnal and create underground dens to avoid dealing with heat. They have hair for insulation in both cold and hot temperatures, and hair on paws to protect them from the hot sand when they walk. They have a high albedo, white coat to reflect sun rays and large ears to radiate heat and keep cool. Finally, they have variable ventilations to cause heat loss through evaporation. They live in deserts
• Spider Monkeys have long and hook-like arms and legs for reaching foods and grabbing onto them. Their shoulders are flexible for movement and their long, strong tail and feet are like second arms for any assisting purpose. They have acute day-time vision that allows them to estimate distance between trees rapidly to ensure safety and can breed at all times due to the high availability of foos and resources. Their large larynx allows them to make many sounds and communicate in a complex manner in the tropical rainforest.
• The Meranti (shorea faguetiana) can grow over 100m tall to avoid competition for sunlight. It has a hard, dense trunk to support itself against wind stress with a buttressed bottom to stabilize its roots in shallow soil. Its smooth trunk and broad oval leaves shed rainwater rapidly (to avoid over water consumption) and the evergreen pigment of its leaves take ideal conditions of the rainforest to photosynthesize with enzymes adapted to function up to 35 degrees celsius. Seeds produced in large quantity once every 5 years to prevent species from being able to consume the seeds
• Transpiration concerns the capillary reaction as it is the process of water evaporating from open stomata in a plant (only open when photosynthesizing conditions are favorable).
• Factors affecting the rate of transpiration can be external like temperature (kinetic energy of water increases=more water diffusion as transpiration), humidity (more water in atmosphere=less diffusion of water and transpiration), light intensity (more light = more favorable conditions), and wind speed (more wind = more diffusion and movement of water as transpiration)
• Factors affecting the rate of transpiration can be structure related like size and number of leaves (more stomata=more openings for water to leave through), or the thickness of the waxy cuticle (more=more light reflected=less favorable conditions)
• Mangrove trees have pneumatophores that extend outwards over the water to absorb oxygen and cable roots that are close to the ground to also absorb oxygen and also deep for stability. It also has stilt roots to anchor the tree properly and buoyant seeds to be easily carried by the current to fertile soil. Salt glands in leaves remove excess salt in the salt water consumed.
• Animal distributions affected by water availability and temperature (for abiotic factors)
• Plant distributions affected by temperature, water availability, light intensity, soil pH, soil salinity and the availability of mineral nutrients (abiotic)
• Range of tolerance - the range of a specific limiting factor in which an organism can survive
• Transect - A line of points or transects that are placed at regular intervals along a line
• Convergent - Different ancestors who descendants develop similar features due to facing similar abiotic features that pose the same problems
• Mutations are random and behavioral adaptations to a new environment happen the fastest, then followed by a physical adaptation and lastly by a chemical one