AS91155 Demonstrate understanding of adaptation of plants or animals to their way of life (2019)

This assessment activity requires you to work individually to develop a portfolio of information which you can use to produce a written report on the adaptations relating to internal transport in three different taxonomic groups. The portfolio should also include information on how these adaptations allow the organisms to carry out their way of life or occupy the ecological niches that they do. This involves:

• comparing diversity of adaptation in response to the same demand across different taxonomic or functional groups
• limitations and advantages involved in each feature within each organism

Adaptation involves the range of ways in which organisms have developed strategies to carry out their life processes. An adaptation refers to a feature and its function as it enables an organism to carry out a life process and thus occupy a specific ecological niche. An adaptation provides an advantage for the organism in its specific habitat and ecological niche.

You will be assessed on the extent to which your report shows your comprehensive understanding of how three different taxonomic groups or functional groups have adapted to their way of life in relation to the life process of internal transport.

An organism’s way of life is determined by how it relates to other organisms in its surrounding environment (e.g. competition, predation, parasitism, mutualism), the strategies it employs to ensure survival of the species and how it adapts to its physical habitat.

Their adaptations involve the range of features or characteristics that have evolved in order to enable an organism to carry out their life processes in order to survive and reproduce. An adaptation refers to a feature and its function that provides an advantage for the organism in its specific habitat and ecological niche. It may include structural, behavioural, or physiological features of the organism.

Complete a written report on the adaptations relating to internal transport over three taxonomic or functional groups and how these adaptations allow them to carry out their way of life. Use your portfolio of collected, relevant biological information to provide supporting evidence. Your written report requires you to:

1. Name the three organisms you have studied and provide a brief description of the organism’s way of life, including their ecological niche e.g. physical habitat, adaptations, competitors, predators etc.
2. Describe the structural features of the different components of each type of internal transport system.
3. Describe the structural, behavioural and/or physiological adaptations that enable the three organisms to carry out their internal transport.
4. Explain how or why these adaptations enable the three organisms to successfully carry out internal transport. You should provide examples to support your explanations.
5. Discuss how these adaptations for internal transport are interrelated so that they enhance the effectiveness of the life process in enabling the organisms to carry out their way of life.

• In your discussion, you should include any specific examples of advantages and limitations of named features or processes.

6. You may use annotated diagrams to support your answer. All diagrams taken from another sources must be referenced.