CONTINUITY OF AN ORGANISM LIFE

Chapter IIIMs. Ruth

Organism on the earth are predicted to have been existed for million years. The fact show that there is continuity of life of organism.

How do organisms sustain their continuity of life?

The continuity of an organism life occurs through internal factors include adaptation and reproduction while external factor is natural selection.

The environment surrounding organism always changes, such as temperature, sunlight, water and food. These changes will influence the continuity of an organism’s life. How can such organism survive?

An organism that is able to survive is an organism which is adaptable. Adaptation is the ability of living organism to adjust itself to its environment and then inherit that ability to its descendants.

Adaptation is a characteristic development of an organism which make it more suited to live and reproduce in an environment.

A. Adaptation

Living organism have different adaptive ability,

some adapt easily while others difficult to adjust.

Living organism that have high adaptive ability will easily adjust to its environment. The organism with low adaptive ability will have a hard time adjusting to its environment and may not survive or even extinct.

There are 3 adaptation processes which are performed by organism to survive in order to preserve their species, they are : morphological adaptation, physiological adaptation, and behavioral adaptation.

Morphological Adaptation is an

adaptation of the shape of body parts or body organs of organisms to their environment .

For example : shapes of birds beak, shapes of birds foot, types of insects mouth, and streamline fish shapes.

Morphological Adaptation

* The shapes of bird’s beak is adjusted according

to the kinds of food they eat.

* A bird’s feet also adjusted based on where the bird lives and its habit.

* The morphological adaptation of an insect’s mouth is based on how it gets its food. Although there are

many different shapes of insect’s mouth, it basically consist of mandibles (the jaws), maxilla (the second

jaws) and the lower lip labium.

Biting or chewing type

Insects which bite,

have strong upper and

lower jaw, for

examples :

grasshopper and

cockroach, cricket.

Sucking or siphoning type

These insects have a long

extracting organ that can be

curled, for example : butterfly.

Butterflies use this mouth part

to extract nectar from the

flowers, true bug use it to

extract fluids from plants and

animals.

Licking or sponging type

These insects have

organs to lick or called

the lips, for examples :

bees and flies.

Piercing and sucking

type

These insects have

strong, long, and sharp

jaws, for examples :

mites and mosquito.

* Fish with streamlined bodies usually fast swimming that may swim in high speeds most of

the time. They can move into one to another areas to hide, to escape from predators or to get

food that cannot be reached by other fish.* Even tough a penguin, an octopus, and a squid

do not have a body shape like fish, they can change their body into a streamlined shape when

they swim quickly in the water.

* other examples of morphological adaptation

* other examples of morphological adaptation

* other examples of morphological adaptation

Physiological Adaptation is an adaptation

of organs functions and system toward an environment. Changes that occurs during adaptation is not physically visible.

Physiological Adaptation

examples of physiological adaptation

Behavioral Adaptation is self adjustment

to the environment by changing its behavior.

Behavioral Adaptation

Factors affecting organism

adaptation

B. REPRODUCTION

Reproduction

Generative / sexual

Reproduction

Pollination

Fertilization

Vegetative / asexual

Reproduction

Natural vegetative

propagation

Bulb, rhizome, stem tuber, root tuber,

stolon, shoots, adventitious

shoots.

Artificial vegetative

propagation

Air layering, ground

layering, cutting.

C. NATURAL SELECTION