Describe a scenario showing how ecological change and evolution can affect one another.

Short Answer

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An organism's interaction with its environment and with other organisms may trigger evolutionary change. An evolutionary shift might alter ecological interactions, such as improving a predator's capacity to recognize its victim.

Step by step solution

01

Evolution

Evolution as a consequence of descent with modification explains the variety of species.Various factors contribute to this process, including mutation, recombination, natural selection, and genetic drift. The mechanisms that lead to evolution include natural selection and random genetic mutation.

02

Ecological change

A change in the environment or ecology is caused by human activity and natural environmental processes. Human meddling, natural disasters, and animal contact are all examples of environmental changes.

03

Relation between ecological change and evolution

Evolution is shaped by ecology. In evolutionary processes, an environment serves as a template: natural selection causes organisms to conform process. It has been suggested, however, that evolutionary processes reciprocally influence ecology.

New habitats and food supplies created spurts of animal diversification, leading to further ecological shifts. In this case, as in many others, environmental change was inextricably linked to evolutionary change.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Commercial fisheries target older, larger cod fish, causing cod that reproduce at a younger age and smaller size to be favored by natural selection. Younger, smaller cod have fewer offspring than do older, larger cod. Predict how evolution in response to fishing would affect the ability of a cod population to recover from overfishing. What other reciprocal eco-evolutionary effects might occur? (See Concept 23.3.)

What do the data from the field experiment indicate about the effect of competition on the growth of these two species? Which species was limited more by competition?

Which statement about dispersal is false?

(A) Dispersal is a common component of the life cycles of plants and animals.

(B) Colonization of devastated areas after floods or volcanic depends on dispersal.

(C) Dispersal occurs only on an evolutionary time scale.

(D) The ability to disperse can expand the geographic distribution of a species.

Give examples of human actions that could expand a species' distribution by changing its (a) dispersal or (b) biotic interactions.

Jens Clausen and colleagues, at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, studied how the size of yarrow plants (Achillea lanulosa) growing on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada varied with elevation. They found that plants from low elevations were generally taller than plants from high elevations, as shown in the diagram. Clausen and colleagues proposed two hypotheses to explain this variation within a species: (1) There are genetic differences between populations of plants found at different elevations. (2) The species has developmental flexibility and can assume tall or short growth forms, depending on local abiotic factors. If you had seeds from yarrow plants found at low and high elevations, how would you test these hypotheses?

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