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Read the following passage. Highlight the key terms and underline the main
ideas.
With life's many levels of organization and great diversity of organisms, biologists have a huge subject to
study. And it gets bigger every year as researchers continually make new discoveries. How can anyone
make sense of all this information? Fortunately, there are some basic ideas, or themes, that apply to
biology at all levels and for all organisms. The ten themes described here will help you connect the many
things you'll learn as you explore life.
Biological Systems
Have you ever heard the saying "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts"? This saying captures the
importance of how a combination of parts can form a more complex organization called a system. A
system has properties that are based on the arrangement and interactions of its parts. For example, a
bicycle is a mechanical system you can use for exercise or transportation. But just try to get around on a
box full of bicycle parts!
Your body, like that of any organism, is a living system. You make use of the interactions among its parts
when you type on a keyboard or click a computer mouse. The joints in your fingers and wrist give your
hand a wide range of movements. But your bones themselves cannot move. Movement depends on
contractions of the muscles attached to the bones. Muscles are coordinated by signals from the brain,
carried by nerves. Finally, blood vessels supply all of these parts with oxygen and food. Together, the
parts of your body enable you to work the computer. You are certainly more than the sum of your parts,
and so are all biological systems.
An ecosystem such as a forest is also a biological system. Like your body, an ecosystem has properties
that depend on how its parts interact. For example, the organisms in the ecosystem require a steady supply
of certain chemicals to live. Plants obtain most of their necessary chemicals from the soil, water, and air.
Animals acquire most of the chemicals they need by eating plants or other animals. Chemicals are
returned to the soil by bacteria and fungi that decompose the wastes and remains of organisms.You could
say that such interactions of organisms with each other and with the nonliving environment "put the
system in ecosystem." The biological systems theme applies to all levels of life, from the biosphere all the
way down to the interactions of molecules in cells.
Figure 1-10
The human body, like most multicellular organisms, consists of many
levels of organization.
A multicellular organism's development and survival are based on the functions and interactions of its
many cells. This cellular basis of life is a theme you will encounter often as you explore the living world.
Figure 1-13
When an egg cell and sperm cell fuse, DNA from each parent is combined
in the fertilized egg. The inherited DNA directs the eventual
transformation of the fertilized egg into a person.
How does the inherited DNA bring about such traits as the color of eyes or the shape of a nose?
Later chapters in this book will help you answer these questions. For now, the key point is that inherited
information in the form of DNA enables organisms to reproduce their own kind.
Figure 1-15
Energy enters an ecosystem as sunlight. Plants
are producers that convert light energy to
What happens to the chemical energy stored in the food consumers eat? It is converted to other forms of
energy as the organism carries out its life activities. Moving, thinking, breathing, seeing, and everything
else you do requires your cells to convert some of the chemical energy of food into other forms of energy.
You can compare this energy conversion to a car converting the chemical energy stored in gasoline to the
mechanical energy of moving wheels. Whenever an organism or a car performs work, it converts some of
its energy supply to heat. The heat is released to the environment. Even when you are sitting still in class,
you produce about as much heat as a 100-watt light bulb. Because all organisms lose energy in the form
of heat, an ecosystem cannot recycle energy. Life on Earth depends on a continuous supply of energy
from the sun.
Regulation
Another theme you will encounter frequently in your study of biology is the ability of organisms to
regulate their internal conditions. For example, you have a "thermostat" in your brain that reacts
whenever your body temperature varies slightly from 37C (about 98.6F). If this internal thermostat
detects a slight rise in your body temperature on a hot day, your brain signals your skin to produce sweat.
Sweating helps cool your body.
Panting is another example of a cooling mechanism. You've probably seen a dog pant on a hot day, but
did you know that some birds also pant? Panting causes moisture on the large surface of the animal's
lungs to evaporate, cooling the body as a result.
The ability of mammals and birds to regulate body temperature is just one example of homeostasis, or
"steady state." Mechanisms of enable organisms to regulate their internal environment, despite changes in
their external environment.
Figure 1-19
In this hypothetical example of natural selection, darker beetles are more
likely to survive longer and reproduce, passing their genes on to more
offspring.
Evolution Natural selection is the mechanism by which evolution occurs. The term evolution means "a
process of change." Biologists use the word evolution specifically to mean a generation-to-generation
change in the proportion of different inherited genes in a population. For example, in the beetle example,
genes for dark color are becoming more common and genes for light color are becoming less common
over the generations of beetles. The beetle population is said to be undergoing evolution, or evolving.
Scientific Inquiry
Biology is a science and, as such, relies on certain processes of inquiry. As you will read in Chapter 2,
scientific inquiry involves asking questions about nature and then using observations or experiments to
find possible answers to those questions. For example, by fitting a radio transmitter onto an Atlantic
loggerhead turtle, researchers will use signals from the transmitter to monitor the animal as it moves
throughout its range. Such research is helping biologists determine how large a nature preserve must be to
support a population of Atlantic loggerheads.
Concept Check
1. Using examples, describe three biology themes.
2. Describe four ways you have interacted with your environment today.