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The origin of eukaryotic endosymbiosis is a more dramatic example. [23] All adaptations help organisms survive in their ecological niches. The adaptive traits may be structural, behavioural or physiological. Structural adaptations are physical features of an organism, such as shape, body covering, armament, and internal organization.
Animals that live in groups often give alarm calls that give warning of an attack. For example, vervet monkeys give different calls depending on the nature of the attack: for an eagle, a disyllabic cough; for a leopard or other cat, a loud bark; for a python or other snake, a "chutter". The monkeys hearing these calls respond defensively, but ...
A plastron is a type of structural adaptation occurring among some aquatic arthropods (primarily insects), a form of inorganic gill which holds a thin film of atmospheric oxygen in an area with small openings called spiracles that connect to the tracheal system.
Cuckoos are a canonical example; the female cuckoo has its offspring raised by a bird of a different species, cutting down the biological mother's parental investment. The ability to lay eggs that mimic the host eggs is the key adaptation. The adaptation to different hosts is inherited through the female line in so-called gentes (gens, singular).
In other words, the beginning of evolving a particular trait starts out with a primary adaptation toward a fit or specific role, followed by a primary exaptation (a new role is derived using the existing feature but may not be perfect for it), which in turn leads to the evolution of a secondary adaptation (the feature is improved by natural ...
The science writer Philip Ball states that Thompson "presents mathematical principles as a shaping agency that may supersede natural selection, showing how the structures of the living world often echo those in inorganic nature", and notes his "frustration at the 'Just So' explanations of morphology offered by Darwinians."
Structural biology deals with structural analysis of living material (formed, composed of, and/or maintained and refined by living cells) at every level of organization. [ 1 ] Early structural biologists throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries were primarily only able to study structures to the limit of the naked eye's visual acuity and ...
Webbed feet have arisen in all major vertebrate lineages with limbed animals. Most webbed-footed species spend part of their time in aquatic environments, indicating that this homologous structure provides some advantage to swimmers. Some examples from each class are highlighted here, but this is not a complete listing.