Adaptations

Behavioural pattern

Behavioural pattern describes an animal's dominant way of life. Arboreal animals, for example, live in trees and nocturnal animals are active at night.

• Able to aestivate
• Able to hibernate
• Arboreal
• Capable of torpor
• Fossorial
• Nocturnal
• Nomadic
• Parasitic
• Troglophilic

Communication and senses

Communication and senses are how an organism perceives the world - for instance through scent or sight - and how it sends messages or warnings to others.

• Able to echolocate
• Able to scent mark
• Adapted for ultrasound
• Bioluminescent
• Pheromone signaller

Development

Development covers all the different stages of life through which an animal or plant passes from conception, through adulthood to death. So a male deer is first an embryo, then a fawn, then a stag, whilst an oak tree goes from acorn to seedling to sapling to mature tree.

• Able to metamorphose
• Helpless at birth
• Precocial

Ecosystem role

Ecosystem roles are about the part an animal or plant plays in sustaining or maintaining the habitat around them. Bees, for example, pollinate flowers, without which those plants would not produce fruits or seeds. Other species, such as dung beetles, play a vital role in keeping grasslands clear of animal waste and recycling valuable resources.

• Pollinator
• Seed disperser

Feeding habits

Feeding habits describe the dominant diet of a particular species or group of species, and how they go about obtaining it.

• Blood sucker
• Carnivorous
• Detritus feeder
• Dung eater
• Herbivorous
• Scavenger

Locomotion

Locomotion is how an animal gets around - for instance by swimming, flying or climbing.

• Adapted to climbing
• Adapted to flying
• Adapted to gliding
• Adapted to jumping
• Adapted to swimming
• Sessile

Morphology

Morphology is anything to do with what a plant or animal looks like - its size, shape, colour or structure.

• Able to mimic
• Aposematic
• Camouflaged
• Neotenic
• Polymorphic
• Sexually dimorphic

Predation

Predation is catching and killing an animal in order to eat it. The prey can be chased, ambushed or caught in a trap such as a spider's web.

• Predator
• Venomous

Reproduction

Reproduction covers all the tactics and behaviours involved in obtaining a mate, conceiving the next generation and successfully raising them. It includes everything from plants being pollinated, to stags fighting over hinds, to lionesses babysitting their sisters' cubs.

• Asexual
• Co-operative breeder
• Egg layer
• Monogamous
• Ovoviviparous
• Parthenogenetic
• Polygynandrous
• Polygynous
• Semelparous
• Sequentially hermaphroditic
• Viviparous

Social behaviour

Social behaviour is all about how an animal interacts with members of its own species. For instance, does it live in a colony or on its own, does it fight to be top of the pecking order, or does it try to keep strangers away from its home?

• Colonial
• Eusocial
• Hierarchical
• Social
• Territorial