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Many aspects of an animal or plant can be correctly called adaptations, though there are always some features whose function remains in doubt. By using the term adaptation for the evolutionary process , and adaptive trait for the bodily part or function (the product), one may distinguish the two different senses of the word.
Because animals living in cold climates need to conserve as much heat as possible, Allen's rule predicts that they should have evolved comparatively low surface area-to-volume ratios to minimize the surface area by which they dissipate heat, allowing them to retain more heat. For animals living in warm climates, Allen's rule predicts the ...
When asked about the purpose of sight in humans and animals, even elementary-school children can answer that animals have vision to help them find food and avoid danger (function/adaptation). Biologists have three additional explanations: sight is caused by a particular series of evolutionary steps , the mechanics of the eye (mechanism ...
Alternatives to Darwinian evolution have been proposed by scholars investigating biology to explain signs of evolution and the relatedness of different groups of living things. The alternatives in question do not deny that evolutionary changes over time are the origin of the diversity of life, nor that the organisms alive today share a common ...
A wheeled buffalo figurine—probably a children's toy—from Magna Graecia in archaic Greece [1]. Several organisms are capable of rolling locomotion. However, true wheels and propellers—despite their utility in human vehicles—do not play a significant role in the movement of living things (with the exception of the corkscrew-like flagella of many prokaryotes).
With the growth in human habitats, different animals have adapted to survive within these urban environments. These types of environments can exert selection pressures on organisms, often leading to new adaptations. For example, the weed Crepis sancta, found in France, has two types of seed, heavy and fluffy. The heavy ones land nearby to the ...
Heralded as the world's largest rodents, the South American rainforest natives can actually weigh as much as a full grown man.. But despite the fact that they apparently like to eat their own dung ...
Adaptationism is an approach to studying the evolution of form and function. It attempts to frame the existence and persistence of traits, assuming that each of them arose independently and improved the reproductive success of the organism's ancestors.