By: Maisha Loveday 8C

Like humans and animals, plants can adapt to the environment surrounding them. They can change the properties in their leaves, their roots and their stems. Different types of plants grow in different places around the world. Cactuses grow in the desert and warmer areas with less water whilst taller and more attractive looking plants grow in rainforests.

Deserts are known for the heat and the lack of water in the area. There are plants and animals that can live in deserts despite the heat, sand and lack of water. Cactuses are one of these plants and they adapt to the environment by making their roots longer to have more space and a more likely chance to get water. They also have a thicker waxy cuticle to prevent water loss and have water storage tissue in their stems. For pollination, cactus flowers open in the night times because that is the time insects and animals that can help with pollination are around.

In the rainforest, there are many trees and plants there for it is dark under the canopy and plants in the rainforest need to compete against each other for sunlight. Some plants grow on others to reach the light and others climb on taller plants to get up. Their stems grow longer and they lean towards the sun. Also, it rains a lot in that environment and to adapt to this, plants have dry tips and a waxy leaf so that water doesn’t stay on the leaf and cause bacteria and fungi to grow on it. Some plants on the rainforest floor look more attractive so that insects can pollinate them because there isn’t much wind to help with that.

Food chains, and food webs show how energy flows through animals. It starts in plants or ‘producers’ because they create their own food through photosynthesis using carbon dioxide, water, and solar energy. After primary consumers ‘herbivores/omnivores’ eat the plants the energy is then passed into them and then into the secondary consumers ‘small carnivores’ when they eat the primary consumers. Then the tertiary consumers ‘large carnivores’ eat the secondary consumers and the energy is passed to them. When the tertiary consumers die, the decomposers such as fungi and bacteria decompose the remains into minerals for plants or producers. Thus, the chain is continuous. The arrows on food webs and food chain diagrams show the flow of energy going through the different consumers.

Ecosystems are different types of environments with different temperatures, weather, features, animals and plants. Animals and plants need to adapt to these differences and the different types of animals and plants also affect the food chain. For example, fish and plankton can be found in food chains in a marine ecosystem but not in a desert ecosystem. When the elements of the food chain in different ecosystems change, it can alter the whole chain. (See Example on Next Slide).

For example, in the diagram, sedge is one of the producers. If there was a shortage of sedge then it there would be less ants and moths. If there were less ants and moths there would be less lizards, frogs, and centipedes. If there were less centipedes and less frogs, there would be less kookaburras. That shows that one change can alter the whole system.

It is important plants can create their own food through photosynthesis because that is really where the energy gets linked into the food chain. It starts as solar energy which plants can use to feed themselves and then travels through different consumers. Plants are called producers because they can produce their own food unlike the other consumers in the food chain which need to rely on other living organisms to survive. Producers are the only living organisms on the food chain that don’t need to depend on other organisms because the ingredients plants need to create food through photosynthesis are not living organisms.

The process of photosynthesis and respiration that takes place within a plant both require specific gases such as oxygen and carbon dioxide. In photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is taken in from the leaves and oxygen is in the water. In respiration, carbon dioxide is again taken in through the stomata pores in the leaf and oxygen comes out through the leaves. Humans and animals breathe in oxygen which plant breath out and breathe out carbon dioxide which plants breathe in so it is like a cycle. However, plants respire in the night times when there is no sun so that the process of photosynthesis can take place in the day time with the sunlight. That is why plants are so important to human and animal life. The Amazon rainforest is called ‘the Lungs of the Earth’ because there are so many plants growing there.

The carbon cycle is the cycle that carbon follows so the element is never lost. Like water, carbon is part of an endless cycle that travels through the atmosphere, animals, plants and decomposers. If we start in humans and animals, carbon is then released through respiration and then when the animal dies, the decomposers release carbon dioxide while they decompose the dead organisms. Then the carbon dioxide is released into the air where it is then taken in by plants through photosynthesis and respiration and gets back into animals when they eat plants or producers.

 "Desert." MBGnet. Web. 16 Feb  "Tropical Rain Forest." MBGnet. Web. 16 Feb  "Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Atmosphere." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 23 Feb  Meng, Hui. "Food Chains and Food Webs." Virtual Teacher Aide. 23 Feb Web. 24 Feb  Johnson, Roberta. "The Carbon Cycle." Windows to the Universe. 07 Nov Web. 27 Feb