Evolution Produces Species Diversity

We know that each species adapts the environment where it lives.

Adaptation
- The acquisition of traits that allow a species to survive in its environment. It is why adaptation
is one of the very crucial things needed in surviving.
2 ways of using the term “Adapt”
Acclimation – When an individual organism can respond immediately to a
changing environment.

Genetic traits - passed from generation to generation and allow a species to

live more successfully in its environment.

*Evolution – the basic idea is that species change over generations

because individuals compete for scarce resources.
*Natural Selection – the process of better-selected individuals passing their
traits to the next generation.
*Mutations – changes to the DNA coding sequence of individuals that
occurs occasionally, and the changed sequences are inherited by
offspring.

Limiting Factors of Species

These limiting factors are:
1. Physiological stress due to inappropriate levels of some critical
environmental factor, such as moisture, light, temperature, pH, or specific
nutrients.
2. Competition with other species
3. Predation, including parasitism and disease
4. Luck.

Critical Factor
- According to the chemist Justus von Liebig (1840), the single factor in shortest
supply relative to demand is the critical factor determining where a species lives.