Reproduction Adaptations of Living Things

2. Reproduction Adaptations of Living Things W. Javier Chavez Kimberly Berg-Trinka

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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).

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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. 

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. Iguanas

18. 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.

19. Gila monster

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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. 

24. 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.

25. Beavers

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. Adaptations • Mortality is high, with around two-thirds 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.

30. Badgers

31. 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.

32. 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.

33. Penguins • Black and white countershading makes them nearly invisible to predators from above and below.

34. 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.

35. 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.

36. Great White shark

37. 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.

38. Ants

39. 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.

40. 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.

41. 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.

42. 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.

43. Bees

44. 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.

45. 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.

46. 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.

47. 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.

48. 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.

49. Birds/Cloacal Protuberance

50. 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.