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This lateral line enables the fish to sense changes in water pressure and turbulence adjacent to its body. Using this information, schooling fish can adjust their distance from adjacent fish if they come too close or stray too far. [73] The visual system in fish is augmented by other sensing systems with comparable or complementary functions.
Secondarily aquatic tetrapods. Several groups of tetrapods have undergone secondary aquatic adaptation, an evolutionary transition from being purely terrestrial to living at least part of the time in water. These animals are called "secondarily aquatic" because although their ancestors lived on land for hundreds of millions of years, they all ...
Organisms at high altitude. An Alpine chough in flight at 3,901 m (12,799 ft) Organisms can live at high altitude, either on land, in water, or while flying. Decreased oxygen availability and decreased temperature make life at such altitudes challenging, though many species have been successfully adapted via considerable physiological changes.
In Late Devonian vertebrate speciation, descendants of pelagic lobe-finned fish such as Eusthenopteron exhibited a sequence of adaptations: Panderichthys, suited to muddy shallows; Tiktaalik with limb-like fins that could take it onto land; early tetrapods in weed-filled swamps, such as Acanthostega, which had feet with eight digits, and Ichthyostega, which had limbs.
Euryhaline. Euryhaline organisms are able to adapt to a wide range of salinities. An example of a euryhaline fish is the short-finned molly, Poecilia sphenops, which can live in fresh water, brackish water, or salt water. The green crab (Carcinus maenas) is an example of a euryhaline invertebrate that can live in salt and brackish water.
Aquatic feeding mechanisms. Grouper capture their prey by sucking them into their mouths. Aquatic feeding mechanisms face a special difficulty as compared to feeding on land, because the density of water is about the same as that of the prey, so the prey tends to be pushed away when the mouth is closed. This problem was first identified by ...
Acclimatization. Acclimatization or acclimatisation (also called acclimation or acclimatation) is the process in which an individual organism adjusts to a change in its environment (such as a change in altitude, temperature, humidity, photoperiod, or pH), allowing it to maintain fitness across a range of environmental conditions.
Intertidal ecology is the study of intertidal ecosystems, where organisms live between the low and high tide lines. At low tide, the intertidal is exposed whereas at high tide, the intertidal is underwater. Intertidal ecologists therefore study the interactions between intertidal organisms and their environment, as well as between different ...