These notes cover the first chapter of the course, including the lecture, readings, and essential discussions. Whether you missed a class, need to review for exams, or want a concise summary of complex topics, these notes are your go-to resource. They are ideal for students who want to save time a...
chapter 1: what is life?
properties of living things:
1. reproduction
2. growth and development: information carried by genes controls the pattern of growth in all
organisms
3. energy use
4. order: each living thing has a complex but well ordered structure
5. cells: the cell is the fundamental unit of life
6. unicellular: one cell
7. multicellular: many cells
8. response to the environment: keep an organisms internal environment within narrow limits
9. evolution: individuals with traits that help them survive and reproduce pass the genes for
those traits to offspring, driving the evolution of populations
evolution:
the core theme of biology
branches of the tree of life:
•at the cellular level all life is very similar
•every living species is a branch on the tree of life extending back through ancestral species
•similar share a recent ancestor
darwin's observations:
•every species has the potential to increase its numbers very rapidly by exponential growth
•for all organisms, resources (food, shelter, sunlight), are limited
darwin understood that not all individuals were equally successful
•heritable variation means that not all individuals are alike
•some individuals leave more offspring behind
•individuals with traits better suited to compete in the current environment will produce more
offspring
natural selection: nonrandom unequal reproductive success
life is highly diverse in the number of species yet there is tremendous unity among living things
darwin noted that humans have been selecting for traits for millennia, this is called artificial
selection
natural selection in action:
antibiotics were first discovered in the 1940s
today, some antibiotics have become virtually useless because bacteria have evolved resistance
structure and function:
structure (the shape of something) and function (what it does) provide insight into each other
ex: lungs have increasingly smaller branches ending in tiny sacs where gasses cross into the blood
•branching structure creates large surface area for gas exchange
•lungs bring in O2 and remove CO2
energy and matter pathways:
the ecosystem includes all living organsims as well as non living factors such as air sunlight wind
and water
the dynamics of every ecosystem depend on two main processes:
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