Matter Apply: Try This
Tens of thousands of elephants still die every year as a result of poaching. Poachers typically use poisonous arrows or guns to kill the elephants.
In this unit, you learned about how species, over long periods of time, can adapt and change in order to survive in the environment they live in. This happens because the organisms best suited to survive in an environment will survive and reproduce, passing on the genes that helped them live.
Imagine that you have time travelled to 10 million years in the future and the elephant population is large and thriving. The poachers were not able to kill them because of a mutation that gave certain elephants a trait that helped them survive. Those elephants who survived reproduced, passing on the mutated gene.
Use your imagination to come up with a trait that helped them survive (it does not have to be a trait that already exists!). Answer the following prompts. Use the following key words when you respond: mutation, adaptation, energy, biomass, population, and biodiversity.
Describe the trait that helped elephants survive.
Explain how a thriving elephant population with that trait changed the ecosystem.
I need help with this
Trait: The mutated gene in elephants gave them the ability to camouflage themselves by changing their skin color and pattern at will, similar to a chameleon. This allowed them to blend in seamlessly with their surroundings, making it almost impossible for poachers to spot them.
Thriving elephant population with camouflage trait: With the ability to camouflage themselves, elephants were able to avoid poachers and successfully reproduce, leading to a significant increase in the elephant population. This increase in the elephant population had a cascading effect on the ecosystem. The elephants were able to forage more efficiently and access a wider variety of food sources without the threat of poaching. As a result, the elephant population consumed more vegetation, leading to changes in plant distribution and abundance. This in turn impacted other herbivores and predators in the ecosystem, ultimately increasing biodiversity and overall biomass. The thriving elephant population with the camouflage trait became a keystone species, playing a crucial role in maintaining the balance and health of the ecosystem.