BIO100 Week 2-4 Discussions - Essay Example

Third was his theory of vestigial structures, stating that life started out as very simple and grew more and more complex. Even though he was not a scientist, Malthus was the greatest influence on Darwin’s work. Multhus was an economist who understood the state of world population and his idea that population was growing faster than food can be provided fascinated Darwin; this lead to the theory of ‘survival of the fittest’. Inheritable changes in an organism which occur spontaneously and randomly are called mutations; these may or may not be harmful.

Mutations can also add new traits through new alleles or interchange the amount alleles present. A biome can be defined as a large piece of land containing fauna and flora often defined by their abiotic factors such as climate, vegetation, geology, relief etc. A biome may be mistaken for a large ecosystem but this is not true. Biomes and ecosystems are two different things. The main difference is that organisms in a particular biome make many adaptations in order to be able to survive in that particular setting.

The aquatic biome refers to water bodies. Their adaptations include gills, fins, blubber, stream lined bodies and many other such adaptations. The aquatic biome is in turn divided into two groups: Freshwater Biomes including lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, wetlands and Marine Biomes including oceans, coral reefs and estuaries. Although there are 5 major and different biomes, there may be features present within a biome that resemble those of another. We know that desert biomes contain little to no vegetations, with harsh weather conditions; however, it may occur that on a small area there may be as much vegetation as there is in grassland, not enough to be called grassland but enough to be called similar to it.

Two biomes that can be called similar are Desert and Tundra. Desert and Tundra biomes both face