IB Project Ecology Explorers

Kim Ramirez, Alex Jimenez, Alexis Rogers, Ciara Hernandez

Adaptation

Organisms have the ability to adapt which is an inherited characteristic which increases the organisms chance of surviving. Adaptations have to do with the way it gets its energy or process materials.

Plants Are Producers

• Plants need energy in which they get by doing the following:

• Photosynthesis- This is a process where the plant captures energy from the sunlight and changes it into chemical energy resulting in photosynthesis. The plant then takes water and carbon dioxide and uses these to create sugar which contains carbon, resulting in oxygen to be produced.

Plants Adapt

An example of plants that adapt are grasses, grasses are able to grow in areas of many temperatures and various amounts of rain. Grasses are also able to survive through freezing temperatures, and fires. Plants are able to adapt using odors to protect themselves, use reproductive adaptations, and survive through various temperatures.

Reproductive Adaptations

• In the time span of a few weeks a plant is able to grow and reproduce new seeds in the mountains in the few weeks that the snow is unthawed. Seeds are produced after the flower grows before the snow is able to return.

Seeds Adapt

• Seeds are an important role in adaptation because they are able to survive through different temperatures, wind, fire, and various ways of protection from animals.

• Wind: Seeds are able to adapt through wind, because some seeds have “wings” that allow them to travel away from the parent plant and carried to a different location which allows them to reproduce.

• Animals: Some seeds have barbs or spikes on them that allow them to protect themselves from animals that would like to consume them.

Plants are Autotrophs

• Plants are known as autotrophs due to their ability to self feed, plants retrieve energy from the Sun, carbon dioxide (from the air), and water, and nutrients from the soil.

Plant Adaptation

This video accurately shows how plant are able to adapt to harsh weather throughout the time span in a year and represent the way in which plants respond to their environment.

For example the trees responded to the extremely cold weather by shedding their leaves, which is also an adaptation which causes it survive the harsh season.

Interaction between Organisms

• Symbiosis- Interaction between to two organisms, in which both benefit.

• Mutualism- The interaction between two animals, where both animals benefit.

• Commensalism- The interaction between animals where one benefits and the other remains neutral.

• Parasitism- The interaction between two animals where one is positively effected and the other is negatively affected.

Obtaining Energy and Materials from Food

Consumers: An organism that gets energy from another organism.

Heterotroph: An organism that meets its dietary needs by consuming another organism.

These dietary relations create a prey predator relationship in the food chain.

Multicellular Organisms • Multicellular organisms meet their dietary needs

by being one of the following:

• An omnivore- feeds on plants

• A carnivore- feeds on other animals

• Or a herbivore- feeds on plants and animals

Adaptation to Enironments

• Behavioral Adaptation- The change of behavior in an animal increasing its chances on survival. Example- a possum “playing dead” in order to avoid being eaten by the predator.

• Structural Adaptation- The physical makeup of an organism that increases the animals chances on survival. Example- A polar bear’s blubber to help it survive extreme temperatures.

Populations

Limiting Factors: A factor that controls the environment’s growth, abundance, and distribution of population in an ecosystem.

Carry Capacity: The greatest number of organisms of one species to survive over long periods of time in a designated environment, depending on the effect of limiting factors.

These result in a constantly changing environment.

Change Over Time

• Succession- The replacement of a dominant type of organisms by another ecosystem until a stable community is created.

• Primary Succession- This occurs after an opening of barren habitat is stripped of its vegetation due to the usually lacking of topsoil.

• Secondary Succession- This happens on preexisting soil after the primary succession has been disturbed due to the lack of population.

• Pioneer Species- When a group of organisms (usually plants) first colonize on damaged or new land.