Transcript 11/6/2015 Reproduction Adaptations of Living Things W. Javier Chavez Kimberly Berg-Trinka 11/6/2015 Allocation of life phases • Differing proportions of time are spent in phases of growth and differentiation prior.

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Reproduction
Adaptations
of Living
Things
W. Javier Chavez
Kimberly Berg-Trinka
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Allocation of
life phases
• Differing proportions of time are spent in
phases of growth and differentiation
prior to reproduction
• Reproduction may be a single event or it
may be repeated
• Growth may pause for reproduction or it
may be continuous
• Increasing current reproductive effort
may decrease survivorship i.e. it
reduces potential for future reproduction
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Life today is a
combination of 2
components:
• The Evolutionary Process
• Immediate interactions with the environment
* An example of one is when the Grizzly bear
changed into the Polar bear. Their fur didn’t
blend in with the arctic snow so it couldn’t
hunt. It’s fur was to thin keep it warm. To
change, an animal has to survive long enough
to reproduce. The babies will probably be
changed so they can live and survive there.
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Advantages of
Sexual
Reproduction
• New individuals will have a variety of
chromosomes
• They are also able to adapt to a
changing environment
• Their characteristics are combined from
both parents
• Variations allows individuals to move
into new environments
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A Word on
animals…
• Animals come in all shapes and sizes, and
they live in all kinds of environments. An
environment is everything that surrounds
and affects how an animal lives.
• All animals have adaptations that fit their
environments. An adaptation is a part of an
animal's body or way that an animal
behaves that helps it survive.
• An adaptation is when an animal mutates to
survive.
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Adaptations
• Over the past millions of years organisms
have developed characteristics to help
them to survive in their environment.
• Some adaptations include gills to help
fish breathe, a pouch to protect baby
kangaroos, thorns to protect roses from
pests.
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Adaptations
• Organisms have adaptations that help them
survive and thrive. Some adaptations are
structural (physical features of an organism
like the bill on a bird or the fur on a bear).
• Other adaptations are behavioral (things
organisms do to survive, like bird calls and
migration).
• Adaptations are the result of evolution (a
change in species over long periods of time).
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Adaptations
•Reproductive adaptations- how an organism
reproduces and looks after its young.
•Elephants have a gestation (pregnancy)
period of two years and baby elephants are
quite developed.
•Dandelions produce hundreds of seeds that
blow away in the wind.
*These are two types of reproductive
adaptations.
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Adaptations
• The more adaptations an organism has
the better it can survive in it's
environment.
• Some organisms are able to easily
adapt to a new environment and
survive better than the organisms that
occur naturally in that environment.
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Adaptations
• Adaptations usually occur because a
gene mutates or changes by accident!
Some mutations can help an animal
or plant survive better than others in
the species without the mutation.
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Adaptations
• Over time, animals that are better adapted
to their environment survive and
breed. Animals that are not well adapted to
an environment may not survive.
• The characteristics that help a species
survive in an environment are passed on to
future generations and those
characteristics that don't help the species
survive slowly disappear.
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Adaptations
• Imagine one day a bird is born with a beak
that is longer than the beak of other
birds. The longer beak helps the bird catch
more food. Because of this, it is healthier,
lives longer and breeds more. The gene for a
longer beak is passed on to its offspring.
• The gene continues to be inherited generation
after generation. Eventually, the longer beak
is found in all of the species. This doesn't
happen overnight. It takes thousands of years
for a mutation to be found in an entire
species.
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Adaptations
• An example of this in the cane toad,
which is an introduced species to
Australia (Queensland).
• It has several adaptations that make
it suitable to it's new environment: it
lays large numbers of eggs in almost
any body of water every few weeks.
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Adaptations
• In England the Peppered Moth lives on the trunks of
trees. Most moths are brown, this helps hide from
birds that like to eat them.
• If black peppered moths are born, they do not tend to
survive long as they are easily seen by the birds and
are eaten.
• In some areas in Britain the trees get blackened by
soot from industry. On these trees the black moths
are harder to see and the brown moths become easy
targets for birds.
* This is an example of how natural selection changes
the characteristics of the same organism depending
on where it is.
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Adaptations
• Iguanas lay many eggs at a time (about 50),
in holes in the ground called burrows.
• They also dig pretend burrows to confuse
animals that may be looking for eggs to eat.
• Green iguanas lay many eggs, but only 3-10
babies actually survive to be adults. It takes
green iguana eggs about 8-10 weeks to
hatch, then takes baby iguanas about 2
years to become mature adults.
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Iguanas
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Adaptations
• Gila monsters court and mate between
April and June.
• Usually 3 - 13 eggs are laid in mid-late
summer. These eggs are oval in shape and
have a leathery feel to them.
• The female buries these eggs about 5
inches below the surface. When the sun
heats the sand, the sand, in turn, heats
the eggs. In about 117-130 days, the eggs
hatch.
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Gila monster
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Adaptations
• Porcupines mate in late
summer and early fall.
Porcupines are very vocal
during mating season. Males
often fight over females.
They perform an elaborate
dance and spray urine over
the heads of the female.
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Adaptations
An opossum mother may have as
many as 25 babies, but she
usually will have between seven
to eight. The reason opossums
have so many babies to insure
that some of them survive. Like
most marsupials, opossums are
very small when they are born –
about the size of a navy bean.
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Adaptations
• Newborns climb up the mother's fur and into
her pouch where they find a teat. Some
babies do not find their way to the pouch and
die.
• Only babies who find one of the thirteen teats
will survive. They stay in the pouch and
suckle for 55-60 days.
• Afterwards, they move out of the pouch and
spend another four to six weeks on their
mother's back.
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Adaptations
• Eastern chipmunks mate in early
spring. They usually have one litter a
year with between three and five young.
In some areas a female may have a
second litter. The young will come above
ground when they are about six weeks
old.
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Adaptations
• Beavers reproduce once a year, with mating
activity beginning in January when rivers and
wetlands are covered with ice.
• A 107 to 110 day gestation period follows, with
an average of three to four young born.
• At birth the kits (young beavers) are fully
furred, have their eyes open and incisor teeth
visible.
• Kits are weaned in six to eight weeks.
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Beavers
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Adaptations
• Although weaned within three months, the
young usually remain with the family unit
or colony for up to two years.
• These two-year-olds will disperse, pair,
establish territories, and raise their first
litters at three years of age.
• Under favorable conditions, they will
produce their first litters at two years of
age. The average lifespan of a beaver in the
wild is three to four years.
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Adaptations
• Male mountain hares are sexually mature each
year before females
• Neither females nor males, are known to breed
in their year of birth.
• Females range in reproductive strategies,
producing between one and four litters of 1-3
offspring. Larger females breed earlier, and
females in their first year suffer higher
prenatal mortality in their earliest litter.
• The newly born leverets are fully-furred, have
open-eyes and receive little parental care other
than suckling visits by their mother.
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Adaptations
• Badgers live in social groups of four to 12
adults.
• Only one female badger in a social group
normally breeds, although occasionally two
or more may do so. Litters of two or three
cubs are usually born in February.
• It is estimated that there are about 42,000
social groups of badgers in Britain, made
up of 250,000 adults which produce around
172,000 cubs a year.
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Adaptations
•Mortality is high, with around twothirds of adults dying each year. Road
traffic accidents are a major cause of
death.
•The maximum life expectancy of a
badger is about 14 years, though very
few survive so long.
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Badgers
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Adaptations
• Penguins are designed for life in the sea.
Some species spend as much as 75% of
their lives in the water. (They lay their
eggs and to raise their chicks on land.)
• A streamlined body, paddle-like feet,
insulating blubber, and watertight
feathers all add to their efficiency and
comfort underwater. They also have a
remarkable deep-diving ability.
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Adaptations
• In addition to blubber for insulating
warmth, penguins have stiff, tightly packed
feathers (up to 70 per sq. in.) that overlap to
provide waterproofing.
• Most species of penguins build nests, but the
nests may consist only of a pile of rocks or
scrapings or hollows in the dirt. Emperor
penguins hold the egg on top of their feet
under a loose fold of skin called the brood
patch.
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Penguins
• Black and white countershading makes
them nearly invisible to predators from
above and below.
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Adaptations
• Unlike bony fishes, shark young develop
within the protection of the mother’s body.
• Most sharks reproduce from embryos that
hatch from eggs and continue to grow in
the uterus until fully developed.
• Few species, including whale sharks and
some nurse sharks, still reproduce by
laying eggs externally, a method known as
oviparity.
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Adaptations
• The eggs are protected by a tough, fibrous case
that usually attaches to plants or rocks on the sea
bottom till the young hatch.
• Viviparity is the most advanced mode of
reproduction, with the young nourished through
the mother’s placenta
• Though born fully developed, sharks grow slowly
and mature late (12 to 18 years).
• They have a long reproductive cycle , and
produce few young per brood—usually two to 12,
sometimes more depending on the species.
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Great White
shark
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Adaptations
• The social organization of some ant colonies is
quite varied.
• In the more primitive species, such as the
Ponerine family, the reproductive duties are
diverse. There may be a queen present, or there
may not.
• These two distinctions can further be divided into
whether or not the queen is the sole reproducer
or if some of the worker ants are reproductive as
well. Relatedness of ants in a colony is directly
related to whether or not they all come from one
ant or a variety of gamergates.
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Ants
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Adaptations
• Insemination controls reproduction.
Regardless of which type of structure
exists, the role of regulating
reproduction is important in keeping
the division labor at an optimal level
for prime colony functioning.
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Adaptations
• Most reproductive ants stay underground
(intranidal), but others, including those who
aren't able to reproduce, are extranidal.
• A colony with a sole reproducer tends to have
aggressive workers who protect her and help
her maintain her status.
• In colonies with multiple reproducers, the ants
with developed ovaries are attacked more
often than others.
• Younger ants are more aggressive than older
ones.
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Adaptations
• Queens are different because they have vestigial
wings. These ants can dimorphise into wingless
queens, also called ergatoid queens, as well.
• The reproductive workers are most primitive
with winged queens being the most
evolutionarily advanced.
• Queens employ many of the already discussed
adaptations, such as flight muscle control and
shivering to help them maintain body
temperatures high enough to function in
extremely low body temperatures.
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Adaptations
• Bumblebee queens in arctic conditions employ
several adaptations to deal with the short
season in which it is necessary to establish a
colony.
• Winter may not break until mid-May and the
summer season can be as short as two months.
• Queens must forage for their food, rear a
brood, and establish a nest, fending for
themselves until workers can be born to allow
the colony to grow.
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Bees
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Adaptations
• Arctic bumblebee queens were found
flying and foraging on the very first day
of snowmelt when willow blossoms.
• This is an indicator that the earliest
available food source, has appeared. The
queens also displayed accelerated rates of
foraging.
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Adaptations
• Birds, such as the male Indigo Bunting
have distinctive reproductive behaviors
and morphologies that tie directly with
the rest of their lifestyles.
• Unlike many animals, a bird faces the
very real problem of staying light enough
to fly while still being able to reproduce.
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Adaptations
• One way female birds accomplish
aerodynamic lightness is to lay eggs in a
nest rather than carrying young inside as
mammals do.
• Almost all female birds have only one
functioning ovary; usually the one on the
right is permanently vestigial.
• This makes one less organ to lift off the
ground during flight.
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Adaptations
• Unlike most mammals, a bird's testes are
deep within his "hot" body. This presents a
streamlined flight profile, but it also
creates a critical situation: sperm usually
fail to develop or die if heated just a few
degrees above the optimum.
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Adaptations
• Males therefore develop a swollen area
around the cloacal opening where sperm
are temporarily stored and where
temperatures may be as much as 7º F
cooler. This protuberance contains part
of the vas deferens, where "cool" mature
sperm lie ready to do their duty.
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Birds/Cloacal
Protuberance
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Adaptations
• Female birds also undergo external physical
changes during breeding
• Especially noticeable on a bird in-the-hand
is an "incubation patch“ or "brood patch"-an area of bare skin on the bird's belly.
• Normally, this region is nearly covered by
down feathers, which either fall out or are
plucked by the female as she begins
incubating.
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Brood
Patch/
American
Robin
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Adaptations
• Once absent from her belly the female is
much better able to transmit body heat to
her developing eggs.
• The brood patch also becomes highly
vascularized (filled with blood vessels that
carry more heat to eggs or chicks), and it
collects fluid beneath the skin, turning the
patch into what amounts to a very efficient
hot water bottle.
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The end!
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