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Transcript
Three Types of Environmental Adaptations Adaptations Adaptation is the evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes better able to live in its environment. Adaptations are body features and behavior habits that help a living thing survive and reproduce in its natural environment. Organisms, from microbes to plants and animals, inhabit environments that can change to become drier, hotter, colder, more acidic, darker and sunnier -- with an almost infinite number of variables. Organisms with genetic advantages, such as a mutation that helps them survive the new conditions, pass down the change to descendants, and it becomes prevalent in the population to be expressed as an adaptation. The three basic types of adaptations, based on how the genetic changes are expressed, are structural, physiological and behavioral adaptations. Most organisms have combinations of all these types. Structural Adaptation An organism's environment can shape its appearance through structural adaptations. A structural adaptation involves some part of an animal's body, such as the size or shape of the teeth, the animal's body covering, or the way the animal moves, which help the organism survive in its environment. Desert foxes have large ears for heat radiation and Arctic foxes have small ears to retain body heat. Seals have flippers to navigate water and raccoons have separate, flexible digits to manipulate food. White polar bears blend into ice floes and spotted jaguars into the speckled jungle shade. Trees may have corky bark to protect from wildfires. Structural modifications affect organisms at different levels, from the way a knee is hinged to the presence of large flight muscles and sharp eyesight for predatory birds. Physiological Adaptation Physiological adaptations permit the organism to perform special functions (for instance, making venom, secreting slime, phototropism); but also more general functions such as growth and development, temperature regulation, ionic balance and other aspects of homeostasis. Organisms are able to perform certain body functions that help the organism survive in its environment. Based on body chemistry and metabolism, physiological adaptations usually don't show from the outside. They consist of things like more efficient kidneys for desert animals like kangaroo rats, compounds that prevent blood coagulation in mosquito saliva, or the presence of toxins in plant leaves to repel herbivores. Laboratory studies that measure the contents of blood, urine and other body fluids, that trace metabolic pathways, or microscopic studies of an organism's tissues are often necessary to identify physiological adaptations. Sometimes detecting them is difficult if there isn't a common ancestor or a closely related species with which to compare findings. Behavioral Adaptation Adaptations that affect how an organism acts are called behavioral adaptations. Behavior adaptations can be learned or instinctive. (a behavior an animal is born with). Social behavior - some animals live by themselves, while other live in groups. Behavior for protection - An animal's behavior sometimes helps to protect the animal. For instance the opossum plays dead. A rabbit freezes when it thinks it has been seen. Bears hibernate to escape cold; birds and whales migrate to warmer winter climates. Desert animals are active at night during hot summer weather. Lizards seek a sunny spot in the morning to warm up to operating temperatures more quickly. A nesting killdeer will pretend to be injured to lure a predator away from her young. Behavioral adaptations that involve mating procedures, such as that exhibited by the Australian bowerbird, can be amazingly complex. Often behavioral adaptations take careful field and laboratory studies to bring them fully to light, and often involve physiological mechanisms as well. Humans employ cultural adaptations as a subset of behavioral adaptations, where people who live in a given environment learn ways of raising the food they need and coping with the particular given climate.