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Many aspects of an animal or plant can be correctly called adaptations, though there are always some features whose function remains in doubt. By using the term adaptation for the evolutionary process, and adaptive trait for the bodily part or function (the product), one may distinguish the two different senses of the word. [14] [15] [16] [17]
Many different plant species live in the high-altitude environment. These include perennial grasses, sedges, forbs, cushion plants, mosses, and lichens. [81] High-altitude plants must adapt to the harsh conditions of their environment, which include low temperatures, dryness, ultraviolet radiation, and a short growing season.
Fire adaptations are traits of plants and animals that help them survive wildfire or to use resources created by wildfire. These traits can help plants and animals increase their survival rates during a fire and/or reproduce offspring after a fire. Both plants and animals have multiple strategies for surviving and reproducing after fire.
In order to deal with the plant's adaptability, the animal likewise evolved counter-adaptations. [8] Over the history of their shared evolution, plants and animals have significantly diverged, in large part because of productive co-evolutionary processes that emerged from antagonistic interactions.
While amphibians continued to feed on fish and later insects, reptiles began exploring two new food types, other tetrapods (carnivory), and later, plants (herbivory). Carnivory was a natural transition from insectivory for medium and large tetrapods, requiring minimal adaptation (in contrast, a complex set of adaptations was necessary for ...
Many prey animals, and to defend against seed predation also seeds of plants, [55] make use of poisonous chemicals for self-defence. [51] [56] These may be concentrated in surface structures such as spines or glands, giving an attacker a taste of the chemicals before it actually bites or swallows the prey animal: many toxins are bitter-tasting ...
The most common adaptation is the presence of lightweight internal packing cells, aerenchyma, but floating leaves and finely dissected leaves are also common. [5] [6] [7] Aquatic plants only thrive in water or in soil that is frequently saturated, and are therefore a common component of swamps and marshlands. [8]
Herbivores are dependent on plants for food, and have coevolved mechanisms to obtain this food despite the evolution of a diverse arsenal of plant defenses against herbivory. Herbivore adaptations to plant defense have been likened to "offensive traits" and consist of those traits that allow for increased feeding and use of a host. [1]