Unit 3.4 Animal Behaviour and Plant Responses

1. Unit 3.4 Animal Behaviour and Plant Responses AS 90716 External 4 Credits

2. Animal Behaviour and Plant Responses • Environment – abiotic and biotic factors • Plant Responses • orientation (tropisms, nastic responses, taxes) • Plant hormones • Plant timing • Animal behaviour • Orientation (homing, migration) • timing (annual, daily, lunar, tidal) • interspecific relationships (predation, parasitism, mutualism, commensalism, competition for resources) • intraspecific relationships (territoriality, cooperative interactions, reproductive behaviours, hierarchical behaviour, competition for resources).

3. Abiotic Factors Physical factors of the environment

4. Light • Photo- • Intensity • colour • direction • duration

5. ? Gravity • Geo- • allows organisms to tell “up” from “down” and their orientation in space

6. Temperature • Thermo- • average • range

7. Water • Hydro- • humidity • soil moisture • speed of current • salinity • turbidity • depth • average rainfall

8. Current • Rheo- • many aquatic animals align themselves with the direction of the current

9. Chemicals • Chemo- • inorganic nutrients • carbon dioxide & oxygen • saltiness and pH • poisons • macronutrients • micronutrients • pheromones

10. Touch • Thigmo- • response to a solid object

11. Sound • pitch • loudness • range

12. Pressure • important in the ocean • high in the air • formation of weather patterns

13. Wind • velocity • gustiness • direction

14. Substrate • rock • sand • mud • soil

15. Fire can affect • germination • recycling of minerals

16. Some definitions • Ecosystem – all living and physical factors in a specified area • Habitat – place / environment in which an organism lives • Limiting factor – any variable that limits the activity of an organism or population • Anthropomorphism – assigning human attributes to animals

17. Niche Organisms way of life or role in ecosystem • opportunities of habitat • adaptations of organism • structural • behavioural • physiological • life history

18. Gauses Principle “ No two species with identical niches can co-exist for long in the same place “

19. tolerance • Optimum Range - preferred environmental conditions • Zone of Physiological Stress – organism feels stressed and uncomfortable • Upper and Lower limits of Tolerance – organism dies - unable to tolerate conditions

20. Tolerance Lower limit of tolerance Upper limit Zone of physiological stress Zone of physiological stress Zone of intolerance Zone of intolerance Population Species absent Species absent Low Factor High

21. The Environment • Abiotic factors • Biotic factors • Response of organisms to environment • Response of organisms to abiotic factors • Response of organisms to biotic environment

22. Biotic Environment living factors of the environment • Intraspecific relationships – within a species • Interspecific relationships – between species

23. Intraspecific Interrelationships • competition (for resources) • reproduction • aggresive (territories, hierarchies) • co-operative (group defense / hunting)

24. Symbioses

25. Interspecific Interrelationships • competition (for resources) • predator/prey • plant/animal (grazers, browsers etc) • succession (replacement of species over time) • stratification (vertical eg forest layers) • zonation (horizontal eg shore zones) • animal/animal and plant/plant