Research Year 11 Biology IMPORTANT PLZ READ

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Wassouf

Registered Member
Hello all,

first of all I would like to thank the owners of this board for creating such a useful bio site.

Secondly, I am having an assignment which is due tommorow and I am facing some problems in answering couple questions within the assignments so i hope anyone could be nice and give me a complete answer ASAP be4 tommorow:

1: Warm-blooded animals (birds and mammals) living in Tasmania are usually larger in size than animals of the same species living in warmer parts of Australia. Why?

2: Do you think a mammal could survive if it were the size of a mosquito? Explain.

3: Could an insect survive if it were the size of a horse? Explain. (Assume that the mammal and the insect retain their basic characteristics)


Thanks very much,

Regards,

Wassouf
XenonDesigns.Com - Owner
 
1 conjecture. The lack of predators due to human exploitation, including the now extinct human race that flourished in Tasmania makes this question difficult to answer. Size can help a species, specially in cold environments, to survive. Are the bats, kangaroos, spotted dicks bigger in Tasmania. Without imperial info i would say yes.

2.I would say yes if only mammals could get rid of that logical mass called the cerebral cortex.. Opps joke.. No. mammalian species rely on their brains and unless we can pack several billion neurons into a mosquito I think not.

3 Giant ants. Well given time I'm sure evolution could have found a way. Breathing is the major problem for insects. Yet it has been demonstrated that insects flex their bodies to aid in ventilation, so I would say that their only problem is competing with more advance creatures, like us.
 
1: I think you know the answer, larger bodies retain heat better then smaller ones.

2: The smallest mammals weigh in at less then 2grams and less then 4cm in lengh. I see nothing that prevent them anatomically for getting smaller, evolutionarily insect already have the nitch. http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~timm/dm/bumblebee.html

3: No, it would need oxygenating blood, lungs, and its exoskeleton would be far too heavy. Larges insect lived during the late Paleozoic when oxgyen levels were higher, dragon flys the size of kites, millipedes a meters long, that was about it.
http://studentwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~m_ulbrick/
 
Wassouf said:
1: Warm-blooded animals (birds and mammals) living in Tasmania are usually larger in size than animals of the same species living in warmer parts of Australia. Why?
because in the colder parts they need bigger bodies to hold more fat

2: Do you think a mammal could survive if it were the size of a mosquito? Explain.
No, because the amount of energy that it takes to power a mammalian body could not be gathered or held in such small body, hence the reason nothing with lungs is smaller than the hummingbird

3: Could an insect survive if it were the size of a horse? Explain. (Assume that the mammal and the insect retain their basic characteristics)
i would think not, as to get enough oxygen into such a large body would require lungs

Thanks very much,

Regards,

Wassouf
XenonDesigns.Com - Owner
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i would think not, as to get enough oxygen into such a large body would require lungs

are you doing NCEA? if so post your answer sheets so that i can memorise it for next year
 
#3 the square-cube law prevents that. that means that if you double an animal's surface area, the mass cubes, which means that very quickly things become too large to support themselves
 
Yup. You can choose pretty much most of the above for your answer.

BTW I find the square-cube law very interesting. I never knew how much it would be applied to my understanding in all of science back when I first learned it in my freshman bio class, but the emphasis does extend well beyond the field of biology, such as terminal velocity in physics.
 
That law is also very important in why cell don’t get any bigger then half a mm, and why insect don’t get any bigger. So to supply oxygen tissues cannot get thicker then 1mm before some mean of oxygen must be provide, for insect this is done with air tubes, in mammals it is done with oxygenating blood and Myoglobin, guess which strategy is easily scalable?
 
WellCookedFetus said:
2: The smallest mammals weigh in at less then 2grams and less then 4cm in lengh. I see nothing that prevent them anatomically for getting smaller, evolutionarily insect already have the nitch. http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~timm/dm/bumblebee.html
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surface area to volume; there's a limit to how small a mammal can get because of heat loss over a large surface area to volume ratio precluding thermal stability. essentially, the mammal would not be able to eat fast enough to maintain body temp.
 
who said they would be in a environment were they could not maintain thermal homeostasis? I don’t see insects with that problem perhaps all that needed is going cold blooded.
 
WellCookedFetus said:
who said they would be in a environment were they could not maintain thermal homeostasis? I don’t see insects with that problem perhaps all that needed is going cold blooded.
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mammals are endotherms
 
3: Could an insect survive if it were the size of a horse? Explain. (Assume that the mammal and the insect retain their basic characteristics)
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Didn't giant insects used to exist?

Giant ancient insects
They were the giant arthropods of the Carboniferous.
There were extra-large mayflies, supersized scorpions and spiders the size of a healthy spider plant. There was an array of giant flightless insects, and a five-foot-long millipede-like creature, Arthropleura, that resembled a tire tread rolled out flat.

But perhaps the most remarkable of all were the giant dragonflies, Meganeuropsis permiana nd its cousins, with wingspans that reached two and a half feet. They were the largest insects that ever lived. . .

Scientists have long suspected that atmospheric oxygen played a central role in both the rise and fall of these organisms. Recent research on the ancient climate by Dr. Robert A. Berner, a Yale geologist, and others reinforces the idea of a rise in oxygen concentration — to about 35 percent, compared with 21 percent now — during the Carboniferous. Because of the way many arthropods get their oxygen, directly through tiny air tubes that branch through their tissues rather than indirectly through blood, higher levels of the gas might have allowed bigger bugs to evolve.
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http://www.cronaca.com/archives/002030.html

Maybe they weren't the size of a horse, but it is possible for insects to get bigger.
 
but it also says that the oxygen percent was 35% at that time, if you could go back in time and bring one to the present it would die
 
WellCookedFetus said:
and your point is?
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my point is that your statement;
WellCookedFetus said:
who said they would be in a environment were they could not maintain thermal homeostasis? I don’t see insects with that problem perhaps all that needed is going cold blooded.
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is incorrect, misleading, and irrelevant
 
but my statement clearly states "I don’t see insects with that problem perhaps all that needed is going cold blooded." hence I already mention the warm blood aspect of mammals and that perhaps to miniaturize that small a cold blood system would be needed, thus you can't read well.
 
WellCookedFetus said:
but my statement clearly states "I don’t see insects with that problem perhaps all that needed is going cold blooded." hence I already mention the warm blood aspect of mammals and that perhaps to miniaturize that small a cold blood system would be needed, thus you can't read well.
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i realize you're not a biologist, which is why I included what you did not know, the importance of surface area to volume in the limitations of small size in mammals
 
But I obviously knew it as I wrote it down. Perhaps people that are not Biologist might know something about biology?
 
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WellCookedFetus said:
But I obviously knew it as I wrote it down. Perhaps people that are not Biologist might know something about biology?
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you said;
WellCookedFetus said:
The smallest mammals weigh in at less then 2grams and less then 4cm in lengh. I see nothing that prevent them anatomically for getting smaller
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obviously there is something, i.e. surface area to volume ratio and the problem of heat retention and endothermal stability for bodies too small.
 
Really what if this hypothetical micro-mammal lived under the skin of other endotherms? What if it lived in hot tropical environments or in places were temperatures don't vary much? Being warm blooded is not a anatomical trait by the way.
 
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