Ten Things To Know About Adaptation

ten things to know about adaptation by maria lauer 1

introduction

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the ocean

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hot climates

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cold climates

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predators and prey

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competition

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climate change

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pesticide cities compromise and conflict

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between adaptations how the past can help the

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future of human adaptation conclusion

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what’s so interesting about ecology?

Although ecology is a branch of biology, it is a very broad subject within itself, covering specifically how every organism interacts with their environment. Within that category lies various sub-categories that include Behavioral, Population, Marine, Evolutionary, and many more.1 What this book will mainly focus on is adaptation because I find it very important, and it is my job to convince you of that as well.

Adaptation focuses on how living organisms change and evolve over time in order to adjust to their changing environment. It’s impossible for any species to flourish if nothing changes.

Resources change, temperatures change, and basically every element of life changes over time and organisms need to be able to change with them if they don’t want to be left behind.

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Bankss, Peter. “Animal Ecology.” Ezine Articles. N.p., 14 Sept.

2008. Web. 9 Oct. 2012. <http://ezinearticles.com/?AnimalEcology&id=1496714>

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one the ocean There are thousands of species of marine life, from very tiny zooplankton to very enormous whales and each one is adapted to the specific habitat it occupies. Throughout the oceans, all marine organisms must deal with several things that are much less of a problem for life on land: regulating salt intake, obtaining clean oxygen, getting enough light, and more.

of their heads, so they can surface to breathe while keeping most of their body underwater.

They can stay underwater without breathing for more than an hour because they make very efficient use of their lungs, exchanging up to 90% of their lung volume with each breath, and store unusually high amounts of oxygen in their blood and muscles when diving.

Fish can drink salt water, and eliminate the salt through their gills. Whales don’t drink salt water, but instead getting the water they need from the various small organisms they like to eat. Just as their large bodies have adapted to filtering water, they can also take oxygen from it either through their gills or their skin.

Since underwater visibility and light levels can change often, whales do not rely on sight to find their food. Instead, they locate prey using echolocation and their hearing. In the depths of the ocean, some fish have lost their eyes or pigmentation because they are not necessary. 2

Marine mammals however need to come to the water surface to breathe, which is why the deep-diving whales have blowholes on top

Angler Fish. Photo. ScienceInSeconds.com. 6 November 2012.

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Kennedy, Jennifer. “Characteristics of Marine Life.” About.com Marine Life. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://marinelife. about.com/od/marinelife101/p/CharMarineLife.htm>

two hot climates The hot climate of a desert is a very testing environment for living creatures. The hot days and cold nights mean they need to be well equipped to deal with the extremes. All these factors, along with all the hot climates’ lack of water and shelter, has resulted in all animals adapting their bodies to suit the climate.

To keep cool, animals have created various mechanisms to move air circulation around their bodies and dissipate heat. Camels have a thin layer of fur underneath their bellies to help lose heat, while a thicker layer across their humps helps shade them. Owls, nighthawks and poorwills all fly around with their mouths open so that water is evaporated from the mouth. Vultures urinate on their legs so it cools them down as it is evaporated. They can also fly high in the air to experience cooler air flows. Along with keeping cool, finding water

is vital in hot climates especially. It is a very common misconception that a camel stores water in its hump. In fact, a camel has adapted to the heat by being able to go for a very long time without drinking water at all. Mammals have adapted to extract water from cacti. Many small insects obtain great nectar from stems of plants, while larger animals derive water from leaves. Interestingly, kangaroo rats burrow into holes, and recycle all the moisture from their own breath to get retain water. As the rat exhales, water condenses on its nasal membrane.

This process means the rat can conserve a lot of water so it doesn’t need to drink for a day. 3

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Fun Fact One of the camel’s defenses is ‘spitting’ – where they essentially throw up a foul smelling greenish fluid from their stomach all over you if provoked.

Kennedy, Jennifer. “Characteristics of Marine Life.” About.com Marine Life. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://marinelife. about.com/od/marinelife101/p/CharMarineLife.htm>

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Kazukaitis, Kafa. Emperor Penguin Chicks, Antarctica. 2009.

National Geographic Image Collection. National Geographic.

Photograph. 6 November 2012.

three cold climates Antarctic animals are exposed to some of the coldest environments in the world. These animals survive in these harsh conditions by reducing the percentage of their body heat that is often lost to the environment. Antarctic animals have either a windproof or a water proof coat. Emperor penguins are a very good example of this. These birds have four layers of scale-like feathers. These layers overlap each other, forming a good protection from the wind, even in blizzard conditions. Along with the protective skin, the size of extremities plays a big role. These are often the first places to feel cold in winter. Emperor penguins have a very small bill and flippers, which means less blood is required to these areas, thus less heat is lost. They are highly adapted to cold environments – and as the only animal that breeds during the Antarctic winter, they need to be. In

adaptations described, Emperor penguins also have nasal chambers which recover much of the heat lost through breathing, and closely aligned veins and arteries, which enable these birds to recycle their own body heat. Whales,

harsh winter– they form large huddles. Not only does this share body warmth, but it also shelters many of the penguins from the effects of the wind. By alternating which penguins are exposed to the wind, this benefit is shared

“ This is like wrapping yourself in a blanket, but on the inside. ” seals and some penguins have thick fat layers.

These fat layers act like insulation, trapping body heat in. In some animals this is even further refined, with animals selectively able to reduce blood flow to the blubber layers. The further the blood is from the skin surface, the less heat is lost. Blubber layers can also be used as an energy reserve. As with the physical adaptations, behavioral adaptations are just as significant. The best example of this is how Emperor penguins have unique behavioral adaptations that enable them to survive the

equally amongst the group. Huddling can reduce heat loss by up to 50%.4

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“Adapting to the Cold.” Australian Antarctic Division. N.p., 24 Sept. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://www.antarctica.gov.au/ about-antarctica/wildlife/animals/adapting-to-the-cold>

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four predators and prey The relationship between predator and prey is one which is typically beneficial to the predator, and often detrimental to the prey species.

Sometimes, however, predation has indirect benefits to the prey species, though the ones preyed upon themselves do not benefit. This means at each applicable stage, predator and prey species are in an evolutionary arms race to maximize their respective abilities to obtain food or avoid being eaten. This interaction has resulted in a vast array of adaptations.

Camouflage of the dead leaf mantis makes it less visible to both its predators and prey.

One adaptation helping both predators and prey avoid detection is camouflage, a form of crypsis where species have an appearance which helps them blend into the background.

Camouflage consists of not only color, but also shape and pattern. The background upon

which the organism is seen can be both its environment or other organisms. The more convincing camouflage is, the more likely it is that the organism will go unseen.

Mimicry is a related phenomenon where an organism has a similar appearance to another species. One such example is the drone fly, which looks a lot like a bee, yet is completely harmless as it cannot sting at all. Another example of batesian mimicry is the io moth which has markings on its wings which looks like an owlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eyes. When an insectivorous predator disturbs the moth, it reveals its hind wings, temporarily startling the predator and giving it time to escape. Predators may also use mimicry to lure their prey, however.5

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Predation.â&#x20AC;? Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Oct. 2012.

Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predation>

Fun Fact In order to avoid being eaten, some moths will mimic less palatable insects, such as wasps, tarantulas and the praying mantis.

Nichols. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Female Io Moth.â&#x20AC;? Photo. Whatsthatbug.com 12 August 2012. 6 November 2012

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five competition Where a particular food source is scarce or there are simply a large number of organisms is consuming the same food, some may have to adapt to eat alternate foods that have much less competition, insuring the organism can find needed food. Other adaptations involve the organism becoming more efficient eating the same food. For example, some birds have specialized beaks to drink nectar for foods or a pig has a very strong sense of smell especially suited for finding roots and other food that are underground and these are harder for other animals to detect. All of these represent a specialization as part of the adaptive process.

The opposite occurs too. For the same reasons other animals will adapt to broaden their diet.

Many animals are generalists and eat a very wide variety of foods, increasing the odds that something edible can be found. If too many

Bloom, Steve. “Polar Bears Fighting.” Photo. 1000funfacts.com 7 January 2011. 6 November 2012

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animals are eating the same preferred food (making it more scarce), it will just adapt to eat more things helping to insure that something edible can be found. Humans are generalists and the documented food suitable for humans is a very large list. While you may not like a particular food, someone else will readily eat it and you will eat it too if you are starving.

The rise of carnivorous animals occurred eons ago as an adaptation. Animals initially started out as vegetarians, all competing to eat plant foods. Some eventually adapted to eat other animals as initially no animals were doing that.

Nature discovered that these were good to eat too and some animals adapted to take advantage of this opportunity.6

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“How Do Adaptions Help an Organism to Reduce Competition for Food?” WikiAnswers. Answers, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_adaptions_help_an_ organism_to_reduce_competition_for_food>

six climate change While humans struggle over what to do about climate change, many other species already have a solution. A new study shows that many animals, plants, and insects are responding quickly to changing temperatures, moving their habitats to cooler climates so swiftly that they’ve surprised scientists.

not move their homes, and some of whom had climbed into mountains or moved north to escape elevated temperatures.

Leading researchers in marine biology have come across 57 animals along a 2,000km stretch from Queensland to New South Wales

“ As our planet becomes a less habitable place, some creatures are emerging as survivors as their cohorts perish due to habitat loss.”

Among some of the survivors are the comma butterfly, which the British researchers found had moved 220 kilometers north over the past 40 years, from England to Edinburgh. Cetti’s warbler, a bird native to England, had moved 150 kilometers north. And these are just two of the 2,000 animal and plant species that the team had analyzed, some of whose numbers were quickly diminishing because they could

of which they now believe are the result of cross-breeding between the common black tip shark and Australian black tip shark. All the inter-breeding between the two species shows that the animals are adapting to climate change and the hybridization can make the fish stronger, the scientists said.7

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“Hybrid Sharks in Australia Indicate Animals Are Adapting to Climate Change.” MercoPress. 4 Jan. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://en.mercopress.com/2012/01/04/hybrid-sharks-inaustralia-indicate-animals-are-adapting-to-climate-change>

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seven pesticides It’s no secret that most people hate insects, so to get rid of them they go pesticide crazy in trying to get rid of them. Frequently a pest becomes resistant to a pesticide because it develops physiological changes that protect it from the chemical. In some cases, a pest may gain an increased number of copies of a gene, allowing it to produce more of a protective enzyme that breaks down the pesticide into less toxic chemicals. Alternatively, the number of biochemical receptors for the chemicals may be reduced in the pest, or the receptor may be altered, reducing the pest’s sensitivity to the compound. Still other mechanisms include increased rates of excretion of toxic molecules, their sequestration and storage inside of the insect body away from vulnerable tissues and organs, and decreased toxin penetration through the insect body wall.

Often, mutation in a single gene only leads to the development of a resistant organism. In other cases, multiple genes are involved. As a result, resistance is inherited similarly in males and females. Resistance is usually inherited as an incompletely dominant trait. This means when a resistant and a susceptible individual mate with each other, their progeny has just a fair level of resistance (more resistant than the susceptible parent, but not as resistant as the resistant parent). The adaptation to pesticides usually decreases the relative fitness of all the organisms that are in the absence of pesticides.

Resistant ones unfortunately have reduced reproductive output, life expectancy, and even mobility. Therefore, relatively few of them persist in a population that is not exposed to a particular insecticide to which they have developed resistance.8

Fun Fact Only female mosquitoes will suck your blood. They need a blood meal before they can lay eggs.

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“Pesticide Resistance.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Oct. 2012. Web. 23 Oct. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki Pesticide_resistance>

eight cities For its human residents, New York is full of multiculturalism. Millions of people with vastly different religions, customs, characteristics, and beliefs interact and intermingle. This mixing creates confrontation and adaptation among New York’s human citizens, so why should this situation be any different for the “Big Apple’s” animal citizens? Due to “life in the big city,” which includes variables such as the introduction of invasive species, pollution, and the city’s rapid growth altering the native habitat, New York, and other metropolises like it, are becoming hotbeds for studying animal evolution and adaptation. Who needs a lush Amazon rainforest or the Galapagos Islands?

Cities have often been a focal point for invasive species. Metropolises have a “worldly” set of inhabitants, and these inhabitants often bring plants and animals from their own native

lands. As the New York Times reported, some biologists have discovered various ant species originating from all over the world on different street medians. These different varieties of ants interbreed and create hybrids. Animals also

“ It is discovered that some worms are nearly invulnerable to cadmium poisoning.”

smoke streamed from smoke stacks during the Industrial Revolution, these trees became blackened with soot. The less black variety of peppered moth quickly flourished as it was camouflaged from predators among the blackened trees. At the same time, the lightly colored variety of moth declined from being eaten. Despite wanton contamination of the environment, life found a way to survive.9

evolve to live with human pollution. In New York’s Hudson River, scientists have found fish that have swiftly evolved to become resistant to PCB pollution. Animal adaptation to all the human pollution has also been documented in London. Before the industrial revolution, the overwhelming majority of peppered moths sported a light coloration that camouflaged them among the all pastel colored trees. As

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Pomeroy, Ross. “Cities Cause Animals to Adapt and Evolve.”

Real Clear Science. N.p., 27 July 2011. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2011/07/cities-arehotbeds-for-evolution-adaptation.html>

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Fun Fact Ants have two stomachs, one to hold food for themselves, and one for others. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Antsâ&#x20AC;? Photo. io9.com 27 July 2010. 23 October 2012

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nine compromise and conflict between adaptations All adaptations have a downside. Adaptations serving different functions may be mutually destructive. Compromise and makeshift occur widely, not perfection. Selection pressures pull in different directions, and the adaptation that results is some kind of compromise.

Consider the antlers of the Irish elk, (often supposed to be far too large; in deer antler size has an allometric relationship to body size).

Obviously antlers serve positively for defense against predators, and to score victories in the annual rut. Their size during the last glacial period presumably depended on the relative gain and loss of reproductive capacity in the population of elks during that time. Another example: camouflage to avoid detection is destroyed when vivid colors are displayed at mating time. Here the risk to life is counterbalanced by the necessity for reproduction.

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“Cities Cause Animals to Adapt and Evolve.” 27 July 2011. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://realclearscience.com/blog/2011/07/ cities-are-hotbeds-for-evolution-adaptation.html>

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Stream-dwelling salamanders, such as Caucasian Salamander or Gold-striped salamander have very slender, long bodies, perfectly adapted to life at the banks of fast rivers and mountain brooks. Elongated body protects their larvae from being washed out by current.

However, elongated body increases risk of desiccation and decreases dispersal ability of the salamanders; it also negatively affects their fecundity. As a result, fire salamander, less perfectly adapted to the mountain brook habitats have a higher fecundity and broader geographic range.10

Sartore, Joel. “European Fire Salamander” Photo. NationalGeographic.com 6 November 2012

ten how the past can help the future of human adaptation “How we get here is relevant to where we are fossil known as ‘Lucy’ – her species, being an going as a species,” says the analysis released by Australopithecus afarensis, lived back beyond the National Academy of Sciences. Written at 3 million years ago,” Potts said. “Her species the behest of the National Science Foundation, had a certain resilience to environmental it lays out a 10 to 20 year plan for research that change, but her species is no longer around.” would improve understanding of the ancient A more recent example is the Classic Mayan climate and how that influenced human evolu- civilization in southern Mexico and Central tion. With more data available now on ancient America, the report notes. Over a 400-year climate researchers now believe that humans span between 750 and 1150, Mayan population evolved amid “a great deal of instability and dropped by 70 percent or more. environmental fluctuation,” said Potts, director “I think we need to look very closely at climate of the Human Origins Program and curator changes in the past and compare them to the of anthropology at the National Museum of climate changes in the present and see where Natural History. “The human species today is our sources of resilience will come from,” Potts a survivor of lots of different environmental said. “What we’re in now is an experiment that changes,” he said. “The possible implication has never been tried. There’s kind of a cautionis that we have, built into us, a certain degree ary message there, but a hopeful one.”11 of adaptability or resilience.” But history also shows there are limits. “Look back to the

Fun Fact The tooth is the only part of the human body that can not repair itself.

Morello, Lauren. “What Can Past Climate Change Reveal about Human Adaptation? Scientific American.” Scientific American. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.scientificamerican. com/article.cfm?id=history-climate-change-adaptation>

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“Cinereous Vulture” Photo taken by Joachim S. Müller. Flickr.com 28 February 2014 front cover image “Barn Owl” Photo. TheBarnOwlTrust.org 6 November 2012

the evolution continues

Adaptation is crucial for any species to survive and flourish over time. With the newly adapted behaviors, structure, or functions the stronger organisms always outlast the weaker ones and then the stronger traits are passed down to later generationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; otherwise known as natural selection. Why should we care so much about adaptation you may wonder? Because without it you would not be here. We should be much more careful of how we treat the environment because we have to remember to co-exist rather than take over everything. Also, we have to pay attention to adaptations of our ancestors to see what we could or should possibly do next. Even though it seems like weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in a good place now, we still have a lot of evolving to do.

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