Chapter 5: THE LIVING ENVIRONMENT
People have long been curious about living things—how many different species there are,
what they are like, where they live, how they relate to each other, and how they behave.
Scientists seek to answer these questions and many more about the organisms that inhabit the
earth. In particular, they try to develop the concepts, principles, and theories that enable
people to understand the living environment better.
Living organisms are made of the same components as all other matter, involve the same
kind of transformations of energy, and move using the same basic kinds of forces. Thus, all of
the physical principles discussed in Chapter 4, The Physical Setting, apply to life as well as
to stars, raindrops, and television sets. But living organisms also have characteristics that
can be understood best through the application of other principles.
This chapter offers recommendations on basic knowledge about how living things function
and how they interact with one another and their environment. The chapter focuses on six
major subjects: the diversity of life, as reflected in the biological characteristics of the earth's
organisms; the transfer of heritable characteristics from one generation to the next; the
structure and functioning of cells, the basic building blocks of all organisms; the
interdependence of all organisms and their environment; the flow of matter and energy
through the grand-scale cycles of life; and how biological evolution explains the similarity
and diversity of life.
DIVERSITY OF LIFE
There are millions of different types of individual organisms that inhabit the earth at any one
time—some very similar to each other, some very different. Biologists classify organisms
into a hierarchy of groups and subgroups on the basis of similarities and differences in their
structure and behavior. One of the most general distinctions among organisms is between
plants, which get their energy directly from sunlight, and animals, which consume the
energy-rich foods initially synthesized by plants. But not all organisms are clearly one or the
other. For example, there are single-celled organisms without organized nuclei (bacteria) that
are classified as a distinct group.
Animals and plants have a great variety of body plans, with different overall structures and
arrangements of internal parts to perform the basic operations of making or finding food,
deriving energy and materials from it, synthesizing new materials, and reproducing. When
scientists classify organisms, they consider details of anatomy to be more relevant than
behavior or general appearance. For example, because of such features as milk-producing
glands and brain structure, whales and bats are classified as being more nearly alike than are
whales and fish or bats and birds. At different degrees of relatedness, dogs are classified with
fish as having backbones, with cows as having hair, and with cats as being meat eaters.
For sexually reproducing organisms, a species comprises all organisms that can mate with
one another to produce fertile offspring. The definition of species is not precise, however; at
the boundaries it may be difficult to decide on the exact classification of a particular
organism. Indeed, classification systems are not part of nature. Rather, they are frameworks
created by biologists for describing the vast diversity of organisms, suggesting relationships
among living things, and framing research questions.
The variety of the earth's life forms is apparent not only from the study of anatomical and
behavioral similarities and differences among organisms but also from the study of
similarities and differences among their molecules. The most complex molecules built up in
living organisms are chains of smaller molecules. The various kinds of small molecules are
much the same in all life forms, but the specific sequences of components that make up the
very complex molecules are characteristic of a given species. For example, DNA molecules
are long chains linking just four kinds of smaller molecules, whose precise sequence encodes
genetic information. The closeness or remoteness of the relationship between organisms can
be inferred from the extent to which their DNA sequences are similar. The relatedness of
organisms inferred from similarity in their molecular structure closely matches the
classification based on anatomical similarities.
The preservation of a diversity of species is important to human beings. We depend on two
food webs to obtain the energy and materials necessary for life. One starts with microscopic
ocean plants and seaweed and includes animals that feed on them and animals that feed on
those animals. The other one begins with land plants and includes animals that feed on them,
and so forth. The elaborate interdependencies among species serve to stabilize these food
webs. Minor disruptions in a particular location tend to lead to changes that eventually restore
the system. But large disturbances of living populations or their environments may result in
irreversible changes in the food webs. Maintaining diversity increases the likelihood that
some varieties will have characteristics suitable to survival under changed conditions.
HEREDITY
One long-familiar observation is that offspring are very much like their parents but still show
some variation: Offspring differ somewhat from their parents and from one another. Over
many generations, these differences can accumulate, so organisms can be very different in
appearance and behavior from their distant ancestors. For example, people have bred their
domestic animals and plants to select desirable characteristics; the results are modern
varieties of dogs, cats, cattle, fowl, fruits, and grains that are perceptibly different from their
forebears. Changes have also been observed—in grains, for example—that are extensive
enough to produce new species. In fact, some branches of descendants of the same parent
species are so different from others that they can no longer breed with one another.
Instructions for development are passed from parents to offspring in thousands of discrete
genes, each of which is now known to be a segment of a molecule of DNA. Offspring of
asexual organisms (clones) inherit all of the parent's genes. In sexual reproduction of plants
and animals, a specialized cell from a female fuses with a specialized cell from a male. Each
of these sex cells contains an unpredictable half of the parent's genetic information. When a
particular male cell fuses with a particular female cell during fertilization, they form a cell
with one complete set of paired genetic information, a combination of one half-set from each
parent. As the fertilized cell multiplies to form an embryo, and eventually a seed or mature
individual, the combined sets are replicated in each new cell.
The sorting and combination of genes in sexual reproduction results in a great variety of gene
combinations in the offspring of two parents. There are millions of different possible
combinations of genes in the half apportioned into each separate sex cell, and there are also
millions of possible combinations of each of those particular female and male sex cells.
However, new mixes of genes are not the only source of variation in the characteristics of
organisms. Although genetic instructions may be passed down virtually unchanged for many
thousands of generations, occasionally some of the information in a cell's DNA is altered.
Deletions, insertions, or substitutions of DNA segments may occur spontaneously through
random errors in copying, or may be induced by chemicals or radiation. If a mutated gene is
in an organism's sex cell, copies of it may be passed down to offspring, becoming part of all
their cells and perhaps giving the offspring new or modified characteristics. Some of these
changed characteristics may turn out to increase the ability of the organisms that have it to
thrive and reproduce, some may reduce that ability, and some may have no appreciable
effect.
CELLS
All self-replicating life forms are composed of cells—from single-celled bacteria to
elephants, with their trillions of cells. Although a few giant cells, such as hens' eggs, can be
seen with the naked eye, most cells are microscopic. It is at the cell level that many of the
basic functions of organisms are carried out: protein synthesis, extraction of energy from
nutrients, replication, and so forth.
All living cells have similar types of complex molecules that are involved in these basic
activities of life. These molecules interact in a soup, about 2/3 water, surrounded by a
membrane that controls what can enter and leave. In more complex cells, some of the
common types of molecules are organized into structures that perform the same basic
functions more efficiently. In particular, a nucleus encloses the DNA and a protein skeleton
helps to organize operations. In addition to the basic cellular functions common to all cells,
most cells in multicelled organisms perform some special functions that others do not. For
example, gland cells secrete hormones, muscle cells contract, and nerve cells conduct
electrical signals.
Cell molecules are composed of atoms of a small number of elements—mainly carbon,
hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and sulfur. Carbon atoms, because of their small
size and four available bonding electrons, can join to other carbon atoms in chains and rings
to form large and complex molecules. Most of the molecular interactions in cells occur in
water solution and require a fairly narrow range of temperature and acidity. At low
temperatures the reactions go too slowly, whereas high temperatures or extremes of acidity
can irreversibly damage the structure of protein molecules. Even small changes in acidity can
alter the molecules and how they interact. Both single cells and multicellular organisms have
molecules that help to keep the cells' acidity within the necessary range.
The work of the cell is carried out by the many different types of molecules it assembles,
mostly proteins. Protein molecules are long, usually folded chains made from 20 different
kinds of amino acid molecules. The function of each protein depends on its specific sequence
of amino acids and the shape the chain takes as a consequence of attractions between the
chain's parts. Some of the assembled molecules assist in replicating genetic information,
repairing cell structures, helping other molecules to get in or out of the cell, and generally in
catalyzing and regulating molecular interactions. In specialized cells, other protein molecules
may carry oxygen, effect contraction, respond to outside stimuli, or provide material for hair,
nails, and other body structures. In still other cells, assembled molecules may be exported to
serve as hormones, antibodies, or digestive enzymes.
The genetic information encoded in DNA molecules provides instructions for assembling
protein molecules. This code is virtually the same for all life forms. Thus, for example, if a
gene from a human cell is placed in a bacterium, the chemical machinery of the bacterium
will follow the gene's instructions and produce the same protein that would be produced in
human cells. A change in even a single atom in the DNA molecule, which may be induced by
chemicals or radiation, can therefore change the protein that is produced. Such a mutation of
a DNA segment may not make much difference, may fatally disrupt the operation of the cell,
or may change the successful operation of the cell in a significant way (for example, it may
foster uncontrolled replication, as in cancer).
All the cells of an organism are descendants of the single fertilized egg cell and have the
same DNA information. As successive generations of cells form by division, small
differences in their immediate environments cause them to develop slightly differently, by
activating or inactivating different parts of the DNA information. Later generations of cells
differ still further and eventually mature into cells as different as gland, muscle, and nerve
cells.
Complex interactions among the myriad kinds of molecules in the cell may give rise to
distinct cycles of activities, such as growth and division. Control of cell processes comes also
from without: Cell behavior may be influenced by molecules from other parts of the organism
or from other organisms (for example, hormones and neurotransmitters) that attach to or pass
through the cell membrane and affect the rates of reaction among cell constituents.
INTERDEPENDENCE OF LIFE
Every species is linked, directly or indirectly, with a multitude of others in an ecosystem.
Plants provide food, shelter, and nesting sites for other organisms. For their part, many plants
depend upon animals for help in reproduction (bees pollinate flowers, for instance) and for
certain nutrients (such as minerals in animal waste products). All animals are part of food
webs that include plants and animals of other species (and sometimes the same species). The
predator/prey relationship is common, with its offensive tools for predators—teeth, beaks,
claws, venom, etc.—and its defensive tools for prey—camouflage to hide, speed to escape,
shields or spines to ward off, irritating substances to repel. Some species come to depend
very closely on others (for instance, pandas or koalas can eat only certain species of trees).
Some species have become so adapted to each other that neither could survive without the
other (for example, the wasps that nest only in figs and are the only insect that can pollinate
them).
There are also other relationships between organisms. Parasites get nourishment from their
host organisms, sometimes with bad consequences for the hosts. Scavengers and
decomposers feed only on dead animals and plants. And some organisms have mutually
beneficial relationships—for example, the bees that sip nectar from flowers and incidentally
carry pollen from one flower to the next, or the bacteria that live in our intestines and
incidentally synthesize some vitamins and protect the intestinal lining from germs.
But the interaction of living organisms does not take place on a passive environmental stage.
Ecosystems are shaped by the nonliving environment of land and water—solar radiation,
rainfall, mineral concentrations, temperature, and topography. The world contains a wide
diversity of physical conditions, which creates a wide variety of environments: freshwater
and oceanic, forest, desert, grassland, tundra, mountain, and many others. In all these
environments, organisms use vital earth resources, each seeking its share in specific ways that
are limited by other organisms. In every part of the habitable environment, different
organisms vie for food, space, light, heat, water, air, and shelter. The linked and fluctuating
interactions of life forms and environment compose a total ecosystem; understanding any one
part of it well requires knowledge of how that part interacts with the others.
The interdependence of organisms in an ecosystem often results in approximate stability over
hundreds or thousands of years. As one species proliferates, it is held in check by one or more
environmental factors: depletion of food or nesting sites, increased loss to predators, or
invasion by parasites. If a natural disaster such as flood or fire occurs, the damaged
ecosystem is likely to recover in a succession of stages that eventually results in a system
similar to the original one.
Like many complex systems, ecosystems tend to show cyclic fluctuations around a state of
approximate equilibrium. In the long run, however, ecosystems inevitably change when
climate changes or when very different new species appear as a result of migration or
evolution (or are introduced deliberately or inadvertently by humans).
FLOW OF MATTER AND ENERGY
However complex the workings of living organisms, they share with all other natural systems
the same physical principles of the conservation and transformation of matter and energy.
Over long spans of time, matter and energy are transformed among living things, and
between them and the physical environment. In these grand-scale cycles, the total amount of
matter and energy remains constant, even though their form and location undergo continual
change.
Almost all life on earth is ultimately maintained by transformations of energy from the sun.
Plants capture the sun's energy and use it to synthesize complex, energy-rich molecules
(chiefly sugars) from molecules of carbon dioxide and water. These synthesized molecules
then serve, directly or indirectly, as the source of energy for the plants themselves and
ultimately for all animals and decomposer organisms (such as bacteria and fungi). This is the
food web: The organisms that consume the plants derive energy and materials from breaking
down the plant molecules, use them to synthesize their own structures, and then are
themselves consumed by other organisms. At each stage in the food web, some energy is
stored in newly synthesized structures and some is dissipated into the environment as heat
produced by the energy-releasing chemical processes in cells. A similar energy cycle begins
in the oceans with the capture of the sun's energy by tiny, plant-like organisms. Each
successive stage in a food web captures only a small fraction of the energy content of
organisms it feeds on.
The elements that make up the molecules of living things are continually recycled. Chief
among these elements are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, calcium,
sodium, potassium, and iron. These and other elements, mostly occurring in energy-rich
molecules, are passed along the food web and eventually are recycled by decomposers back
to mineral nutrients usable by plants. Although there often may be local excesses and deficits,
the situation over the whole earth is that organisms are dying and decaying at about the same
rate as that at which new life is being synthesized. That is, the total living biomass stays
roughly constant, there is a cyclic flow of materials from old to new life, and there is an
irreversible flow of energy from captured sunlight into dissipated heat.
An important interruption in the usual flow of energy apparently occurred millions of years
ago when the growth of land plants and marine organisms exceeded the ability of
decomposers to recycle them. The accumulating layers of energy-rich organic material were
gradually turned into coal and oil by the pressure of the overlying earth. The energy stored in
their molecular structure we can now release by burning, and our modern civilization depends
on immense amounts of energy from such fossil fuels recovered from the earth. By burning
fossil fuels, we are finally passing most of the stored energy on to the environment as heat.
We are also passing back to the atmosphere—in a relatively very short time—large amounts
of carbon dioxide that had been removed from it slowly over millions of years.
The amount of life any environment can sustain is limited by its most basic resources: the
inflow of energy, minerals, and water. Sustained productivity of an ecosystem requires
sufficient energy for new products that are synthesized (such as trees and crops) and also for
recycling completely the residue of the old (dead leaves, human sewage, etc.). When human
technology intrudes, materials may accumulate as waste that is not recycled. When the inflow
of resources is insufficient, there is accelerated soil leaching, desertification, or depletion of
mineral reserves.
EVOLUTION OF LIFE
The earth's present-day life forms appear to have evolved from common ancestors reaching
back to the simplest one-cell organisms almost four billion years ago. Modern ideas of
evolution provide a scientific explanation for three main sets of observable facts about life on
earth: the enormous number of different life forms we see about us, the systematic
similarities in anatomy and molecular chemistry we see within that diversity, and the
sequence of changes in fossils found in successive layers of rock that have been formed over
more than a billion years.
Since the beginning of the fossil record, many new life forms have appeared, and most old
forms have disappeared. The many traceable sequences of changing anatomical forms,
inferred from ages of rock layers, convince scientists that the accumulation of differences
from one generation to the next has led eventually to species as different from one another as
bacteria are from elephants. The molecular evidence substantiates the anatomical evidence
from fossils and provides additional detail about the sequence in which various lines of
descent branched off from one another.
Although details of the history of life on earth are still being pieced together from the
combined geological, anatomical, and molecular evidence, the main features of that history
are generally agreed upon. At the very beginning, simple molecules may have formed
complex molecules that eventually formed into cells capable of self-replication. Life on earth
has existed for three billion years. Prior to that, simple molecules may have formed complex
organic molecules that eventually formed into cells capable of self-replication. During the
first two billion years of life, only microorganisms existed—some of them apparently quite
similar to bacteria and algae that exist today. With the development of cells with nuclei about
a billion years ago, there was a great increase in the rate of evolution of increasingly
complex, multicelled organisms. The rate of evolution of new species has been uneven since
then, perhaps reflecting the varying rates of change in the physical environment.
A central concept of the theory of evolution is natural selection, which arises from three well-
established observations: (1) There is some variation in heritable characteristics within every
species of organism, (2) some of these characteristics will give individuals an advantage over
others in surviving to maturity and reproducing, and (3) those individuals will be likely to
have more offspring, which will themselves be more likely than others to survive and
reproduce. The likely result is that over successive generations, the proportion of individuals
that have inherited advantage-giving characteristics will tend to increase.
Selectable characteristics can include details of biochemistry, such as the molecular structure
of hormones or digestive enzymes, and anatomical features that are ultimately produced in
the development of the organism, such as bone size or fur length. They can also include more
subtle features determined by anatomy, such as acuity of vision or pumping efficiency of the
heart. By biochemical or anatomical means, selectable characteristics may also influence
behavior, such as weaving a certain shape of web, preferring certain characteristics in a mate,
or being disposed to care for offspring.
New heritable characteristics can result from new combinations of parents' genes or from
mutations of them. Except for mutation of the DNA in an organism's sex cells, the
characteristics that result from occurrences during the organism's lifetime cannot be
biologically passed on to the next generation. Thus, for example, changes in an individual
caused by use or disuse of a structure or function, or by changes in its environment, cannot be
promulgated by natural selection.
By its very nature, natural selection is likely to lead to organisms with characteristics that are
well adapted to survival in particular environments. Yet chance alone, especially in small
populations, can result in the spread of inherited characteristics that have no inherent survival
or reproductive advantage or disadvantage. Moreover, when an environment changes (in this
sense, other organisms are also part of the environment), the advantage or disadvantage of
characteristics can change. So natural selection does not necessarily result in long-term
progress in a set direction. Evolution builds on what already exists, so the more variety that
already exists, the more there can be.
The continuing operation of natural selection on new characteristics and in changing
environments, over and over again for millions of years, has produced a succession of diverse
new species. Evolution is not a ladder in which the lower forms are all replaced by superior
forms, with humans finally emerging at the top as the most advanced species. Rather, it is
like a bush: Many branches emerged long ago; some of those branches have died out; some
have survived with apparently little or no change over time; and some have repeatedly
branched, sometimes giving rise to more complex organisms.
The modern concept of evolution provides a unifying principle for understanding the history
of life on earth, relationships among all living things, and the dependence of life on the
physical environment. While it is still far from clear how evolution works in every detail, the
concept is so well established that it provides a framework for organizing most of biological
knowledge into a coherent picture.
