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Physical plant defences
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The intricacy and detail, the structure of every living thing is astounding. Each new personal discovery produces a broader appreciation and respect for nature, such as learning the number of species equipped with specialized defense mechanisms. This innate ability develops over time through adaptation. Adaptations are changes in an organism's physiological structure, function, or habits that allow it to survive in new surroundings. Animals utilize numerous weapons to escape harm. These include camouflage, trickery in the form of mimicry, chemical combat, and appearing injured or playing dead.
I had heard of birds feigning a broken wing in order to lure intruders away from their nest. After what seemed like eons of waiting, this behavior finally manifested itself in a neglected pasture littered with tansy, bull thistles, and piles of ancient, petrified horse manure. The killdeer had been crying out its shrill warning for sometime when, suddenly, it appeared with its wing askew, looking quite broken. Mesmerized, I watched as the fearless mother valiantly attempted to lead me away from her nearby nest.
While numerous species have defensive weapons at their ready, others, such as the monarch butterfly, go to great lengths to survive predation. The adult butterfly lays its eggs on milkweed leaves. After hatching, the caterpillars feed on the milkweed, which contains a poison called cardenolides, or cardiac glycosides that is toxic to nearly all vertebrates. The monarch stores this bitter tasting chemical throughout the changes from larva to pupa to adult. One attempt at a monarch lunch is all it takes to teach a hungry predator to avoid the bright colors of monarch caterpillars and butterflies. No wonder several other ...
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...nisms are trickier to locate which means predators often become frustrated and give up.
As environments and conditions change, the organisms living there must also change. Developing defensive mechanisms such as mimicry, camouflage, and chemical combat increases the chance for survival. Adaptation is necessary for organisms to survive predation.
"Adaptation is not limitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation."
-Mahatma Gandhi
Come read about adaptation
Made to eat the vegetation;
Or still more gruesome is the tale,
Of those who chewed another's tail.
Look at your hand, and then your thumb;
A dinosaur was not so dumb;
Just like your hand its claw worked well
To grasp, or push, or climb, or kill.
-Author Unknown
Monarch Butterflies and Butterfly Weed, a type of milkweed, have coevolved as plant and pollinator. This means that they both rely on one another to survive. Milkweed is the primary source of nutrition for monarchs. Monarchs only eat Asclepias tuberosa a particular species of Milkweed. The monarch relies on toxins in the milkweed to fend off predators such as birds. The toxic tendencies of the milkweed plants caused the government to attempt o eradicated the plant along roadsides and in cow pastures. This has caused a major decline in population of milkweed, which is also endangering monarchs. Milkweed relies on the monarch to pollinate it so that it can reproduce.
An adaptation is the characteristic of an organism that makes it likely to survive. There are three types of adaptations: structural, physiological, and behavioural. Structural adaptations are physical features, physiological adaptations are related to the internal body functions, while behavioural adaptations refer to how organisms respond to stimuli (Beavis 2014). This paper will discuss some adaptations that help koalas and eucalyptus trees survive in their environments.
The story “A Brutal Murder in a Public Place” by Joyce Carol Oates follows a person in an airport who hears a small bird but cannot seem to find it. Oates uses imagery and symbolism between the narrator and the bird to show how trapped and overlooked the narrator truly feels.
Denotatively a bird is defined as a, Any of a class (Aves) of warm-blooded vertebrates distinguished by having the body more or less completely covered with feathers and the forelimbs modified as wings, often capable of flying. The authors/Glaspell’s strategic comparison of Mrs. Wright to a bird can be interpreted connotatively that she was a free,
...d genuine excitement, although the reasons were still scientific. The birds’ effects on Dillard, on the other hand, contrasted from how the birds had affected Audubon. Throughout her whole encounter with the starlings, Dillard “didn’t move” at all. She was mesmerized from when the birds first appeared to her up until they had wiped out into the woods. As the birds disappeared into the trees, she “stood with difficulty” with her “spread lungs [roaring]” Ultimately, Dillard was appalled by the magnificence of the flocks in flight.
Smith, Gene. "Lost Bird." American Heritage 47.2 (1996): 38. MAS Ultra - School Edition. EBSCO. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.
middle of paper ... ... that occurs is only that which allows for a species to adapt to its present circumstances. As the examples given here illustrate, natural selection may take on many forms and give a species better defensive, offensive, or reproductive measures in the struggle for existence, which, though it sounds dramatic and urgent, is nothing more than being able to effectively cope with the external world and reproduce. Works Cited Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species.
Evolution in general, is a hard concept to grasp. There are multiple factors that effect the outcome a species, for example: genetics, nurture, nature, and the environment all play an important role. It was once said that species do not survive due to the fact that they are the strongest or the most intelligent, but because that species is the most responsive to change.
According to Darwin and his theory on evolution, organisms are presented with nature’s challenge of environmental change. Those that possess the characteristics of adapting to such challenges are successful in leaving their genes behind and ensuring that their lineage will continue. It is natural selection, where nature can perform tiny to mass sporadic experiments on its organisms, and the results can be interesting from extinction to significant changes within a species.
It is important to notice that the opening chapter acts essentially as an introduction to a wider discussion throughout his book. In an effort to give his exploration some order and consistency, Bluestone organizes his discussion under five sections. He identifies five main points, which composes the process of adaptation. Despite these efforts to contain each discussion under such headings, Bluestone’s discussion goes off track during his analysis, which only makes the laws that govern adaptation harder to underst...
A biologist, known as Piaget was interested in how an organism adapted to their environment, especially behavior adaptation to the environment. Piaget hypothesized that infants are born with schemes operating at birth that he called "reflexes." However, in human beings an infant uses these reflexes to adapt to the environment, these reflexes are quickly replaced with constructed schemes. Piaget described two processes used by the individual in its at...
These toxins are called cardiac glycosides and usually provide benefits to the butterfly. What would normally hurt other species, the Monarch butterfly gains these compounds in their wings and exoskeletons making a defense mechanism. The Monarch feeds off the toxins and ingests it into its system and has this toxic that will be harmful to predators. Most predators will avoid the monarchs because of the toxins because of taste bad or even make the predators vomit. The Monarch and milkweed together can form a toxic entity that makes them
Organisms require food resources to obtain energy for survival and reproduction. From the food that organisms consume they acquire energy needed for metabolic processes such as respiration, growth, and reproduction. Some organisms have the ability to get food resources better than others. The amount of food availability in a specific habitat is limited, therefore organisms that are not able to get the food resources most likely will go to a unfilled niche to get their food resources. Because there is no competition and there are a lot of unfilled niches, organisms that are not adapted to these niches can exploit them. Organisms that are able to adapt to these new niches, will eventually develop mutations that will help them exploit these niches and give them a big advantage over other organisms. Individual species that are able to adapt to a new environment have a higher chance of surviving because the competition is lower and more resource is available. So organism such as animals and plants rely on adaptive radiation mechanism to ensure they survive and pass on their genes to their offspring.
" University Of Windsor Review 16.1 (1981): 92-101. Print. The. Laurence, Margaret. A.S.A. & M.S.A. A Bird in the House. Toronto, ON: McCelland & Stewart, 2010.