BSC 385 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Directional Selection, Heart Rate, Kleptoparasitism

• School: University of Alabama
• Department: Biological Sciences
• Course: BSC 385
• Professor: Carla Atkinson

Document Summary

Physical resources: the inorganic materials or energy organisms require for existence. Physical (abiotic) factors: physical conditions that affect growth and survival. All organisms must survive and reproduce successfully in the environment where they live if they are to persist or they must leave and move to where they can survive and reproduce. Organisms are best adapted to the environmental conditions where their survival and reproduction is greatest. Adaption: any heritable trait (genetically based) that enhances the survival and reproduction of an organism under a given set of environmental conditions. Specialization is expensive: no organism can maximize fitness in all environments. There are upper and lower limits to the physical factors an organism can tolerate. Species differ in the factors that limit their growth and in their ranges of tolerance. Deleterious effects that occur outside the range of tolerance depend on the specific physical factor.