Lesson 46: Adaptations for Survival

Adaptations are inherited traits that can help organisms survive or reproduce in particular environments. The lesson compares body structures, physiology, and behavior and considers the trade-offs of specialization.

Key Ideas

  • An adaptation is an inherited trait that can help living things survive or reproduce in their environment.
  • Different living things meet similar needs in different ways. Their bodies and ways of living are not all the same.
  • Body features and behaviors can work together to help an animal survive. Learning can also help, although a learned skill is not the same as an inherited adaptation.
  • A trait that helps in one place may be less useful in another. An animal’s way of life depends on its environment and the resources it uses.
  • Plants provide food and shelter for many animals. Where living things are found also depends on conditions, other organisms, and whether they can reach a place.

Vocabulary

  • Adaptation: An inherited trait that can help a living thing survive or reproduce in its environment.
  • Physical Adaptation: An inherited body feature that helps in an environment, such as thick fur.
  • Behavioral Adaptation: An inherited way of behaving that helps survival or reproduction. Experience can also affect behavior.
  • Niche: A living thing’s way of life, including the resources it uses and how it interacts with other living things.
  • Habitat: The place or environment where an organism lives.
  • Seed Dispersal: Seeds moving away from the parent plant, carried by wind, water, animals, or other means.

Discussion Questions

  1. A hummingbird can hover in place, which almost no other bird can do. What does hovering let it eat, and what would it lose if it could not hover?
  2. A plant from another region spreads rapidly. Which traits, local conditions, or missing enemies might help explain its spread?
  3. People live in many environments. How do biological traits, learning, clothing, shelter, and shared technology work together?

Supplies

  • The nine-item survival list, paper, and one wild animal that lives near you
  • A notebook, a pencil, and two nearby spots that are clearly different
  • A notebook and what you already know about your own area

Slideshow

Videos

Wordwalls