Understanding and Appreciating The Principles of Ecology
by LEA C. GARCIA
Bio 260 Advanced Ecology
Animals’ lives are shaped by basic needs. In order to survive, animals need to reproduce themselves, protect them from their enemies and to find food. These needs are obtained as long as there are interactions among the animals and other factors in the environment and maintaining the interaction means that there is balance of nature.
Animals live in a variety of unique environments. To survive in many of these environments, animals have adapted both behaviourally and physically. The key concepts here are adaptation and survival. Animals adapt to the environment in order to survive. As I learned about this, I get to appreciate some feeding and protective behaviours of animals through direct observation at home and at the Wildlife Zafari Zoo during the school’s field trip or through film strip presentation at the National Geographic channel.
A variety of feeding behaviours of animals can be considered merely by direct observation. Flies and mosquitoes have this long structure (proboscis) extended to pick up the food and suck up blood, respectively. Dogs have sharp teeth to tear food and to protect themselves and cats have whiskers to serve as "feelers," telling the animal whether or not it can fit into a specific area and also these whiskers are use for food-searching. Birds have wings and fish have scales for movement and protection, respectively.
As I observed some of the animals at the Zafari Zoo, I realized that animals adapt either physically or behaviourally. From readings, an animal adapts physically if there is a structural modification to a part of the body while an animal that adapts behaviourally is something an animal does – how it acts - usually in response to some type of external stimulus. By looking at the animals, I could easily see some of its adaptations - like what it is able to eat, how it moves, or how it may protect itself. Different animals have many different ways of trying to stay alive. Their adaptations are matched to their way of surviving. Each group of animals (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) has its own general adaptations.
Physical and behavioural adaptations fall into three categories: body parts, body coverings, and behaviours. Some body parts for adaptation that I observed in the animals at the Zoo are the sharp claws of the lion, sharp teeth of the tigers for tearing and chewing of food and for defense, large beaks of birds like macaw for food getting. For the body coverings, I observed some animals such as the tiger with striped fur and the leopard with spotted fur both for camouflage, brightly colored feathers of ostriches, potbellies, wild boars and guinea fowls which they use for camouflage, defense, and mating, scales of snakes, crocodiles, lizards, iguanas, turtles and a lot more cold blooded animals for protection. How the animals respond to any stimulus is the specific behaviour one gets to observe.
Also at the Zoo, I got to observe that there are animals that have evolved their adaptations. This means a long period of slow change resulted in an animal's adaptation(s). For example, the spots on the leopard did not emerge overnight. Instead, this process took generation upon generation of leopard physically adapting to their environment for characteristic spot patterns to evolve. As I observed these leopards, I noticed that there are more leopards with spot patterns than those without spots. This allowed the longer surviving leopards to reproduce and create more leopards with spot patterns like their own. Indeed, this process of change over time is the key to how many organisms develop adaptations. Some adaptations can arise quickly through genetic mutations; these mutations also maybe deadly.
From the National Geographic Channel, I got to see that snakes have the Jacobson’s organ deep inside the mouth for detecting odors. Woodpeckers use their hard, chisellelike beaks to search for food. Catfish have whiskerlike sensory organs called barbels that sift through mud and sand to find food. For defense with some animals that rely on their camouflage to avoid predators, some camouflage may include having coloring that blends into the background or having a shape that resembles that of another object. Some insects such as butterflies are brightly colored and stand out from their surroundings. A rattlesnake’s rattling noise is part of its defense against attackers.
All these things are what Ecology is all about. It is the science that deals with how organisms relate to other organisms and how the organisms relate to their environment. Ecology explains many life processes and adaptations. Adaptation is the evolutionary process whereby a population becomes better suited to its habitat. This process takes place over many generations, and is one of the basic phenomena of biology. The term adaptation may also refer to a feature which is especially important for an organism's survival. Learning about ecology becomes more meaningful as the concept of natural selection comes in. It is because such adaptations of animals to the environment are produced in a variable population by the better suited forms reproducing more successfully, that is, by natural selection. Therefore, as organisms interact with one another, natural selection provides an adaptive mechanism for an evolutionary change in populations.
