the material world around us, nature called, consists of living and non-living organisms.Consider their coexistence.Inanimate objects can be characterized as a concept on several levels: atoms, molecules, macro-bodies, megaobekty, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and finally - the universe.
But what is the primary element?Modern science has determined that the smallest "building block" is a quark from a form atoms, and other elementary particles.
However lifeless nature exists in two forms: Substances and field (they both have energy).The energy of the substance reflects the genius of Einstein's formula:
- E = mC2
substance is in four states: solid, liquid, gaseous, and the plasma.
living and non-living organisms do not simply react.We'll discuss it.Initially there were only inanimate: the Earth itself as the planet formed 4.5 billion years ago, and count the appearance of life on it began 0.5 billion years ago.The development of non-living nature came alive.
Since then animate and inanimate nature is not simply co-exist - they closely interact with each other.Under the influence of living organisms in the atmosphere has increased the proportion of oxygen and reduce - carbon dioxide.Relief also changed because of the mountains of organic origin.Microorganisms defined process of soil formation (modern soil suitable for agriculture - a product of their life).There were deposits of oil.
full functioning of the biosphere is impossible without living organisms.They actively contribute to the circuit universal in nature.As you can see, the value of living organisms - is enormous.
emergence of life How did life originate on Earth?Initially, she had established reserves of organic substances.Academician Alexander Oparin in the beginning of the last century has been experimentally proved the occurrence under the influence of electric charges in inanimate nature organic ready to "start living."And in the middle of the same century American scientist Stanley Lloyd Miller (in fact, continuing to study Russian academician) synthesized nucleic acids - the basic structure of proteins.According to Oparin, a prototype of the emergence of single-celled protozoa could become coacervates - self-regulating structure with fatty sheath.
According to many scientists adopted version, the first living organisms were brought to Earth from the outside, meteorite, 500 million years ago.Version plausible, especially as one of their classes - "carbonaceous hondrid" - really brings to Earth bacteria and germs.A scientist Amundsen-Scott station was able to detect and likely "culprit" - bacteria of the genus Deinococcus, and capable of "travel" and "parachute".
Fauna
But back to reality.Distract from the asphalt cities.Should we, urban residents, go to the country, to the country, we are almost everywhere - in the water, on land and in the air, in the soil - to meet the variety of living organisms.
Indeed, the wildlife is everywhere.Ground-air environment inhabit insects, spiders, animals, birds, reptiles, most of its population is diverse.Aquatic habitat is dense enough, fluid and less oxygenated inhabiting its inception divided into a quick swim (nekton) Limited habitat - near the surface or bottom (benthos), distributed throughout the water column (plankton).Soil - dense medium with stable temperature conditions, the light does not fall into the underworld inhabited by worms, insects, larvae.To life in her adapted mole rats and moles.Animal parasites (such as worms) have adapted to life in the bodies of other creatures.
Classification
interesting that all this stirring, breathing, eating, growing, to multiply the variety - it all comes down to certain classes of living organisms.How can it be classified?The reference point is taken the form.It is the basis (primary link) classification of living organisms.Their greatest number of insects show.Each year, with an enviable stability science registers about 7 thousand. Their species.The species has its own habitat.Individuals, its generators are similar in structure, are crossed.Their ability to reproduce offspring.Types of living organisms not settle uniformly over its range, and populations, each of which - own territory.
These types are combined in the genus.For example, the genus wolves are wolves, coyotes, jackals, dogs, dingoes.Similar genera are combined into a family.Canine united race of wolves, foxes, foxes, raccoon dogs, born African Wild Dog.Related family, in turn, united to the detachment.So, canine, civet, cat, Hyenas, bear, raccoon, Cunha make order Carnivora.Classes of living organisms unite their forces.Orders of mammals, in particular, presents 25 units, is called some of them: Predators Rodents Bats, Marsupials, Primates, Artiodactyla, Pitcher, equines, and so on.. Thus, the diversity of living organisms is classified.
list of classes of animals
Let's start with our little brothers, whose representatives - cats and dogs - each of us faced in everyday life.The above pets belong to the class of mammals, so named for the way of feeding their offspring.It consists of 25 units, 140 families, about 4,600 species.It includes and a huge blue whale, and deer, and wolves, and mouse.
However, the most numerous class of insects on the ground.Suffice it to mention that he dominates the class of mammals by as much as three orders of magnitude!The class of insects consists of about 30 units, 1,053,578 species (at the end of 2013).The largest orders include Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera, Hemiptera, Orthoptera.
As you can see, the various classes exhibit different properties of living organisms.
Amphibians (on the contrary, the most "narrow" class) has about 3.5 thousand. Species, reptiles - about 7 thousand. This small class adapted to their environment, preferring to underground and underwater life.
Class Birds combines 8.6 thousand. Species.They are characterized by feathers, they help during the flight, as well as to maintain a constant body temperature.Reproduction occurs by laying eggs.By the way, did you know that the birds were the result of one of the branches of the dinosaurs?After all, they have retained a smaller format ancestral properties of giants who once reigned in the world: the long bones, the keel structure of the body and finally the method of reproduction.
class Fish has about 20 thousand. Species.They are adapted to life in water, which are endowed with gills and fins.
Records animals
Indeed, a man happy diversity of living organisms that inhabit the earth and the sea with the oceans.Sometimes nature shows real phenomena.Consider some of them.The biggest animal is the blue whale, which reaches a length of thirty-five meters.Even newborn kitenysh been drawn to two tons.The fastest bird, peregrine falcon, reaches and in a diving speed of 350 km / h.Recognized builders, termites build their "skyscrapers" -termitniki up to 15 m;beavers, dam builders, not inferior to them - is known, for example, such a dam (Montana) length of 750 meters. Cheetah at the moment of the cast reaches a speed of 160 km / h.The best "actor" in the animal world - Indian mantis.It looks very similar to the orchid flower and insect victim take this insect predator of the source of nectar.
longest snake - the South American anaconda - up to 8 meters.Proteins are considered to be highly reliable barometers: 10 hours, they start feeling the storm that issue their behavior.The biggest flying bird, trumpeter swan, weighs 22 kg, minute, hummingbirds, - 20 g loudest voice howler monkeys (American tropics): it is heard 5 kilometers.The most sensitive animal - a lynx, she clearly distinguish sounds at a distance of one kilometer.The list goes on - page by page.
Properties
properties of living organisms are highlighted in the study as generic signs identifying them and separated from the non-living nature.Biologists managed to summarize at the level of analytical properties of the variety of wildlife.Indeed, all living organisms possess common (generic) properties:
- Uniform chemical composition.As part of the living organisms found the same chemical elements as in inorganic nature.
- open.They are, on the one hand, use the external power source and energy, and on the other - and the waste of their life, and after death they themselves become part of the environment.
- Carry out self-regulation, self-organization in relation to external factors.
- replicate, each generation reproduces the properties of living organisms, it rocks.
- variability in order to better adapt to the environment, adapting to change it for the effective survival.
- grow and develop.If the growth is to be understood as an increase in length and weight, the development - it is the change for the different characteristics of the living organism.
- excitability.This property determines the information samokoordinatsiyu organism, and the regulation of its characteristics of interaction with the environment.
- Resolution.Every living organism can be represented as a set of individual tissues, systems, organs, cells.
should also be noted that all of the above characteristics of living organisms only characterize them when interacting complex.Taken separately, they are not unique and peculiar to inanimate nature.For example, the reservoir has a regular exchange of energy and matter, the growth is a property of crystals, the heavenly bodies - stars, are known to be evolution.
What all living organisms
As you know, all living organisms inherent in the cellular structure.Animal cells themselves are small, from 10 to 100 microns.Cells of various tissues different in shape (e.g., skin cells - goblet or flat, blood - oval and muscle - elongated).
cell itself is surrounded by a membrane envelope "directed selective."She works as a checkpoint: some substances passes inside and out - other.The interior of the cell is filled with moving and dense granular liquid - cytoplasm.Note that the cell of a living organism has well-defined structure of the cytoplasm, but we will look at it later.In the cytoplasm of moving "bubble transport" - the vacuole that carry nutrients and removes waste products.
Surrounded cytoplasm, the cell is rounded dense nucleus - the repository of chromosomes.They control and regulate reproduction and heredity transmitted from the maternal cells - a subsidiary.
chromosomal differences of living organisms
considered above external signs of living organisms - the ability to move, to grow and develop, multiply - can be supplemented invisible to the naked eye, internal.Take, for example, the number of chromosomes (structures containing DNA are in the cell nucleus).It is noteworthy that in cells of different organisms present in different quantities.A man of 46, a gorilla - 48, a horse - 64, the dog has 78. Butterfly 380 chromosomes and ant Myrmecia pilosula «deprived" them: the female of their - 2 pieces, and in the male - only one.
cytoplasm as a set of organelles
continued to study at the level of cells, from which all living organisms through a microscope look at the cytoplasm.We are armed with optics, we see that it is heterogeneous and represents a set of specific cell (organelles).Endoplasmic reticulum membrane comprise multiple, filled with tiny channels.In this grid grouped "protein factories" - compact rounded ribosome.Another organelle, named after the Italian scientist Camilo Golgi Golgi apparatus.It is a membrane-stack pouches generates fats and carbohydrates."The stomach cells' lysosomes break down carbohydrates, proteins, fats.They are grouped around the fissionable elements make up the digestive vacuole.
Another organelle responsible for heredity, is the center of the cell, the basis of which - two elongated rounded body.
All living cell organelles are working smoothly and consistently, ensuring its vital functions.This process is so complex that a separate branch of science - cell biology - studies, from which all living organisms.
basic fabric
our previous reasoning to determine the structure of the smallest "building blocks" of the body - cells.However, the structure of the body can be seen at the level of tissues.
similar in structure and functionality of the cells that cover the bodies of animals and their internal organs called the epithelial.These protective cells in close contact with each other, that does not prevent them to produce secretion, excretion of waste substances and the absorption of interacting with them.
As you can see, living organisms on Earth have a non-uniform structure of the tissue.Connective tissues make up the skeleton, the framework of the body.These include bone, cartilage, ligaments, tendons.To include connective tissues and blood.It has a dual function - air (oxygen-supplying organs and selecting them from the waste carbon dioxide) and the waiter (providing a "kitchen" -kishechnika nutrients their customers - agencies - and introducing them to the organs of elimination "eaten" at the cellular level (mikroshlaki)).
Muscle tissue - is "the body hydraulics."They are responsible for motor activity, and also the protection and support for internal organs.
nerve tissue composed of specialized cells - neurons - do all the "fine-tuning of a living organism": both internal coordination and synchronization of its organs, and agreed perception senses signals of the environment.Thus, on the other hand, defining more aggregate, from which all living organisms, it is also possible to say of fabrics.They are studying the science of histology.
Conclusion
Nature demonstrates not random combinations of species and types of existing legitimate cohabitation.Any kind of animal lives in his characteristic natural communities.Often targeted, however ill-conceived human activity destroys the existing, well-established communications.Unconditional forced harm caused deforestation, pollution of rivers process."Achievements" of the past century is the destruction of tens of thousands of species of animals.Science is designed to not only stop people through their understanding of the order, with what, in fact, the natural environment they interact, but also to harmonize these relations.Not casually for school program studying biology living organism (Grade 6): the desire to protect the natural environment Russians instilled since childhood.
However, at the end of XX century the interaction between man and nature is determined by the factor that, according to Academician Vernadsky, the biosphere has qualitatively changed, enriched reasonable human activities have evolved and become the noosphere (sphere, taking into account including the aspect of human concern for othersthe animal world).
Evidence of this are the nature reserves and national parks, scientific work on the study and restoration of rare species, popularization of biology.Among saved from extinction can be called bison, buffalo, Australian marsupials bears, sables, monk seals.The list goes on.
Speaking of cell theory we can say that modern biology to save the endangered species has developed a special technology for creating stem cells from skin cells of animals.Next derived stem cells can be transformed into gametes - eggs and sperm of animals and use them to recreate the animal embryo.
