An essay on ants and their role in the ecosystem

A phenotypic characteristic, acquired during growth and development, that is not genetically based and therefore cannot be passed on to the next generation for example, the large muscles of a weightlifter. Any heritable characteristic of an organism that improves its ability to survive and reproduce in its environment.

Young primates learn from elders in their group about proper foraging. Learning[ edit ] Learning is defined as an adaptive change or modification of a behavior based on a previous experience. Studies in social insects have shown that there is a significant correlation between learning and foraging performance.

The animal recognizes the need to come up with a new foraging strategy and introduce something it has never used before to maximize his or her fitness survival. Forebrain size has been associated with learning behavior. Animals with larger brain sizes are expected to learn better.

Examples of innovations recorded in birds include following tractors and eating frogs or other insects killed by it and using swaying trees to catch their prey.

According to Hunttwo genes have been associated with the sugar concentration of the nectar honey bees collect. Foraging behavior can also be influenced by genetics. The genes associated with foraging behavior have been widely studied in honeybees with reference to the following; onset of foraging behavior, task division between foragers and workers, and bias in foraging for either pollen or nectar.

Similar behavior is seen in many social wasps, such as the species Apoica flavissima. Studies using quantitative trait loci QTL mapping have associated the following loci with the matched functions; Pln-1 and Pln-4 with onset of foraging age, Pln-1 and 2 with the size of the pollen loads collected by workers, and Pln-2 and pln-3 were shown to influence the sugar concentration of the nectar collected.

In general, foragers balance the risk of predation with their needs, thus deviating from the foraging behaviour that would be expected in the absence of predators.

Parasitism can affect foraging at several levels. Animals might simply avoid food items that increase their risk of being parasitized, as when the prey items are intermediate hosts of parasites.

Animals might also avoid areas that would expose them to a high risk of parasitism. Finally, animals might effectively self-medicateeither prophylactically or therapeutically. The first is solitary foraging, when animals forage by themselves. The second is group foraging. Group foraging includes when animals can be seen foraging together when it is beneficial for them to do so called an aggregation economy and when it is detrimental for them to do so called a dispersion economy.

Solitary foraging[ edit ] Solitary foraging is when animals find, capture and consume their prey alone. Individuals can manually exploit patches or they can use tools to exploit their prey.

Animals may choose to forage on their own when the resources are abundant, which can occur when the habitat is rich or when the number of conspecifics foraging are few. In these cases there may be no need for group foraging.

It will also ensure that a solitary forager is less conspicuous to predators. An example of an exclusive solitary forager is the South American species of the harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex vermiculatus. Tool use by animals Some examples of tool use include dolphins using sponges to feed on fish that bury themselves in the sediment, [13] New Caledonian crows that use sticks to get larvae out of trees, [14] and chimpanzees that similarly use sticks to capture and consume termites.

Such a forager has perfect knowledge of what to do to maximize usable food intake. While the behavior of real animals inevitably departs from that of the optimal forager, optimal foraging theory has proved very useful in developing hypotheses for describing real foraging behavior.

With those constraints identified, foraging behavior often does approach the optimal pattern even if it is not identical to it. Versions of OFT[ edit ] There are many versions of optimal foraging theory that are relevant to different foraging situations.

These models generally possess the following components according to Stephens et al. The optimal diet model, which analyzes the behavior of a forager that encounters different types of prey and must choose which to attack. This model is also known as the prey model or the attack model.

In this model the predator encounters different prey items and decides whether to spend time handling or eating the prey. It predicts that foragers should ignore low profitability prey items when more profitable items are present and abundant.

How profitable a prey item is depends on ecological variables such as the time required to find, capture, and consume the prey in addition to the energy it provides. It is likely that an individual will settle for a trade off between maximizing the intake rate while eating and minimising the search interval between prey.

The model seeks to find out how much time an individual will spend on one patch before deciding to move to the next patch. To understand whether an animal should stay at a patch or move to a new one, think of a bear in a patch of berry bushes. The longer a bear stays at the patch of berry bushes the less berries there are for that bear to eat.acquired trait: A phenotypic characteristic, acquired during growth and development, that is not genetically based and therefore cannot be passed on to the next generation (for example, the large.

[1] In sharp contrast, under regimes like feudalism (a form of society-with-markets) labour was not a commodity but the property of the landlord. Indeed, labour had no price (i.e. no wage was paid) and its activities were commanded, or commandeered, by the person who had inherited the right to do so.

The Dangerous Side Of Sharks - The scene is a familiar one. Peaceful beachgoers splashing around in the water unaware of the monstrous danger that lurks beneath. The table below presents an abbreviated geologic time scale, with times and events germane to this essay. Please refer to a complete geologic time scale when this one seems inadequate.

There are those who in the realm of science fiction literature wonder if galactic empires are the new "Middle-Earth".But interstellar empires never seem to go out of style, and regardless of their practicality they remain a powerful meme.

The terrorist organization Aum Shinrikyo found inspiration in the galactic empire of Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. Published: Mon, 5 Dec The Amazon rainforest is the largest, most diverse, and beneficial ecosystem in the world.

The Amazon rainforest region is a tropical rainforest located in the northern part of the South America continent, it stretches across the countries of Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, French Guiana and Guiana.