Scit 140 Notes

Week 11 tutorial

• Nomenclature = biological names have meaning  
• Ecology = interrelationships between living things and their environment
• Adaptations

Binomial nomenclature:

• Common names can cause confusion and often do not accurately reflect the kind of organism they signify e.g. Three fish

• Two part naming system often based on Latin or Latinised words, called the bionomial system. The first part of the name is the genus (begins with a capital letter) and the second the species (begins with a small letter). The entire name is written in italics. e.g. Large Cats

•  Panthera Leo (African lion),
• Panthera Tigris (tiger),
• Panthera onca (jaguar),
• Panthera pardus – leopard

• Tiger and Jaguar

• Both the animals are from the Felidae family and Panther genus. The Tiger is mostly known for its appearance with vertical stripes on bright yellow or orange coat. The Jaguar generally - has spots on a yellow coat. The jaguars are sometimes also found to have black base coats with the spots on them.

Hierarchical Classification:

• Species – pardus
•  Genus – Panthera
•  Family – Felidae
•  Order – Carnivora
•  Class – Mammalia
•  Phylum – Chordata
•  Kingdom – Animalia
•  Domain - Eukarya

• Eukarya – membrane bound cell organelles
• Animalia – can move on its own and react to stimuli
• Chordata – nerve cord at the back – vertebrate
• Mammalia – feeds young on milk, life well formed young
• Carnivora – presence of insicor teeth, meat eating - is the order of eutherian mammals that includes wolves, dogs, cats, raccoons, bears, weasels, hyaenas, seals, and walruses, to name just a few. Most carnivores are land animals, but an important and highly specialized group of carnivores, the pinnipeds or "fin-feet," have taken up life in the oceans; pinnipeds include seals, sea lions, and walruses. A few other carnivores, such as the sea otter, are also specialized for life in the oceans.

• Felidae – The cat family is one of four families of terrestrial cat-like mammals descended from the Viverraines (civet/genet like mammals). These four families are linked by the presence of an ossified segment in the auditory bulla of the inner ear; a feature not found in dog-like carnivorans. The separation between these two branches of terrestrial carnivores has been confirmed by a variety of other morphological and DNA-based characters.

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Panthera is a genus of the family Felidae, which contains four well-known living species: the tiger, the lion, the jaguar, and the leopard. The genus comprises about half of the Pantherinae subfamily, the big cats.

Scientific name: Panthera

Pardus = leopard

Homo sapiens

( closely linked with many common features of humans)

• Species – sapiens (wise)
•  Genus – Homo (human, man)
•  Family – Hominidae
•  Order – Primates
•  Sub-class - Eutherians
•  Class – Mammalia
•  Phylum – Chordata
•  Kingdom – Animalia
• Domain - Eukarya

What's common amongst living things?

• All basic chemical/metabolic processes and major cellular components of all living things are similar

• All Living things respire- they used sugar/food source for energy. The energy from respiration is used to convert/change into structural components such as cells, tissues, offsprings

• However , the physical structures of living things may be quite different – see photos below of different appendages for movement.

Adaptation:

• Organisms are adapted to survive in specific environments.

• Adaptation refers to the particular:

• Body shapes
•  Features
• Chemical processes
• Behaviours

That allow organisms to survive

• Most of these are inherited – ‘hand wired’ in the genes
• Some adaptations animals are learnt or developed during their lifetimes. These are learnt adaptations.
• What happens to organisms if the environment changes? Either you survive, or die like a population explosion.

Ecology and the Biosphere:

• Ecology is the scientific study of the relationship/interaction between living things and the environment.

• The interaction can be study from a global perspective (large scale) to that of single individuals of a species (small scale).

• Ecology is another example of biological hierarchy along with taxonomy and biological organisation.

• Major areas of biology
• Ecology is the study of ecosystems
• Ecosystem includes all the living and non-living parts of the environment that affects populations of organisms. Examples of ecosystems:
• - wet tropical rainforest
• Dry sclerophyll forest
• Freshwater steam
• Marine parks

Classifying ecosystems:

• Terrestrial, Aquatic and Marine Environments
• Aquatic low or mineral concentrations

• These are three very very basic types of environments – terrestrial would also include alpine areas, deserts, tropical rainforest, cold rainforest of SW Tasmania etc

• Aquatic would also include – rivers, creeks, billabongs, agric canals etc.

Marine – anything that is salt-water oceans, antartica etc.

[pic 1]

Food Webs

[pic 2]

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Biotic and Abiotic environments

Biotic= living  

Abiotic= non living

• Biotic factors:  availability of food, number of competitors, number of mates, number of predators, number of abundance

• Abiotic factors; temperature, air pressure, humidity, light, Acidity pH, Salinity, Mineral Salts, water currents/ wind, landscape positions, rainfall and water availability

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Dominant Species

• Species in a community that are the most abundant (numbers) or highest biomass

• E.g. termite mounds in NT.

• Competitively superior in exploiting limited resources such as water and nutrients

• e.g. mangroves at Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush

• Successful at avoiding predation or the impact of disease

• e.g invasive species such as weeds, prickly pear cactus, cats, camels, rabbits.

• Impact of human habitation and landscape change e.g. mining, ocean trawling

Dominant Species

• Species in a community that are the most abundant (numbers) or highest biomass e.g. termite mounds in NT.

• Competitively superior in exploiting limited resources such as water and nutrients e.g. mangroves at Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush

• Successful at avoiding predation or the impact of disease e.g invasive species such as weeds, prickly pear cactus, cats, camels, rabbits.

• Impact of human habitation and landscape change e.g. mining, ocean trawling

Invasive and feral species

Feral Cats:  

• They are all over Australia except the wettest rainforests on the mainland and some offshore islands.

• For management purposes, cats are divided into three categories:

• Domestic
•  Stray
•  Feral

Although they are all the same species and individual cats may move between categories.

Cane Toad:

introduced in 1935 to control the sugar cane beetle… however …no predators in Australia, toxic if eaten by native animals

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Fire in the Australian Landscape