Question

1. Living things can only tolerate a limited range of conditions.

Describe two limits to animal life in general. For each limit

• give an approximate upper or lower bound.

• describe the physiological adaptations of one animal discussed in class that is able to survive closer to that boundary than most other animals can

• Explain in detail the mechanisms those adaptations use to allow life close to the limit

Answer 1

Life is found everywhere on planet Earth, and it is not distributed evenly around our mother Earth. Different type of species are found in different localities some have the overlapping ranges, others may do not have it. Each and every species has a pair of environmental ranges within which it can best survive & reproduce. Those conditions are well adapted by the species. Many different physical, abiotic factors influence the species where it lives. This includes temperature, humidity, soil chemistry, pH, salinity, and oxygen levels of the environment.
As we discussed above all species have geographic ranges and they also have tolerance ranges for abiotic environmental conditions. It can be understood in another words, they can tolerate only a certain range of a particular factor, but cannot survive if it is too much or too little. Let’s take temperature as an example. Polar bears can survive very well in low temperatures, but it would die from overheating in the tropics. Let’s discuss giraffe as an another example, a giraffe survives well in the heat of the African savanna, but it would quickly freeze to death in the Arctic cool climate. This examples point out an importance of tolerance ranges of different types of organisms have different tolerance ranges for the same factor.