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BIO113 Studying Mammals Unit 6: The Opportunists - OPEN University
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Open University
S182_6 10 Hours
Introductory
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Course Description
That mammals need energy to support all aspects
of their lives, be it breathing, running, excreting, repairing cells,
reproducing, keeping warm, is a central, unifying theme of the ‘Studying
mammals’ series of units. So is the notion of specialisation of diet –
that mammals display adaptations, i.e. specialised teeth or complex
stomachs, that enable them to cope with the demands of particular diets.
This unit addresses these two related themes of energy and of
specialisation. Why might omnivorous mammals have ‘broken the rules’ and
adopted a much more wide-ranging diet than the carnivores and
herbivores? This unit will tell you about their biology, mixing examples
of mammalian diversity with the identification of characteristics that
are common to many omnivores.
This is the sixth in a series of units about
studying mammals. To get the most from these units, you will need access
to a copy of The Life of Mammals (2002) by David
Attenborough, BBC Books (ISBN 0563534230), and The Life of Mammals (2002) on DVD, which
contains the associated series of ten BBC TV programmes. OpenLearn unit S182_8 Studying mammals: life in the trees
contains samples from the DVD set. You should begin each unit by
watching the relevant TV programme on the DVD and reading the
corresponding chapter in The Life of Mammals. You will be asked
to rewatch specific sequences from the programme as you work through the
unit.
By the end of this unit you
should be able to:
- explain the concept of
energy transfer between trophic levels;
- outline the usefulness and limitations of food chains
and food webs;
- using examples, weigh
up the value of dietary specialisation and of omnivory;
- summarise the physiological changes linked with
‘hibernation’ in grizzly bears;
- give
examples of variations in diet and lifestyle amongst the bear family;
- demonstrate awareness of shortcomings of schemes that
classify mammals by feeding type;
- give
examples of feeding strategies amongst pigs and amongst the raccoon
family;
- identify factors that may have
contributed to the success of omnivores.
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Introduction
 Introduction
Resource- That mammals need energy to
support all aspects of their lives, be it breathing, running, excreting,
repairing cells, reproducing, keeping warm, is a central, unifying
theme of the ‘Studying mammals’ series...
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1 The omnivores
- 1 The omnivores Resource
- As you work through this unit you
will come across boxes, like this one, which give you advice about the
study skills that you will be developing as you progress through the
unit. To avoid breaking up...
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2 The ecology of mammals
- 2.1 Trophic levels Resource
- ‘All flesh is grass’; this
somewhat paradoxical biblical quotation really is only a restatement of
what was more formally explained in previous units in this series. The
materials needed by plant eaters...
- 2.2 Energy flow in ecosystems Resource
- You are about to meet some very
large numbers, expressed in scientific notation, and some new units. The
new units are those that are used to measure the amount of solar energy
received by a part of the...
- 2.3 Food chains and food webs Resource
- This section includes two graphs.
Figure 2 has the standard numerical values on its axes, in this case
years from 1830 to 1930 on the horizontal axis and number of lynx furs
traded, from zero to 60 000,...
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3 Is specialisation always advantageous?
- 3 Is specialisation always
advantageous? Resource
- Specialisation generally implies
the possession of adaptations that make animals particularly effective
or efficient in one or more aspects of their lives. In many of the
examples used in other units in...
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4 The bear necessities
- 4.1 The grizzly bear Resource
- There are three activities in
Section 4, asking you to summarise information in the form of lists. In
the first two, the answers are given but in the third, about the diet of
the giant panda, they are...
- 4.2 Other members of the bear family Resource
- Other omnivorous species of bear
include the Asian black bear, the North American black bear and the
Andean spectacled bear. Although polar bears spend their winters hunting
seals out on the Arctic sea-ice,...
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5 Miss Piggy
- 5 Miss Piggy
Resource
- As the earliest mammals – the
insectivores – were specialists, it follows that the omnivore lifestyle
must have arisen at some later stage in a group or groups of
non-omnivores. In fact, both seed eating...
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6 The good family Procyonidae
- 6 The good family Procyonidae Resource
- As DA comments, this family is
such an odd and varied collection that it doesn't have a common name [p.
170]. Its most familiar member (after which the family is named) is the
raccoon, but the 19 species...
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7 Of rats and men
- 7 Of rats and men Resource
- The two most successful species of
omnivore – humans and the brown (or Norwegian) rat – both arose within
mammalian groups that are not particularly omnivorous. Most members of
our own family, the primates,...
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8 What makes a successful omnivore?
- 8 What makes a successful omnivore? Resource
- From what has been said already,
there's good evidence that the key physical characteristic of the great
majority of omnivores is a non-specialist dentition. What about other
aspects of their biology?
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References and Acknowledgements
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Copyright 2007,
by the Contributing Authors.
Cite/attribute Resource.
administrator. (2010, January 30). BIO113 Studying Mammals Unit 6: The Opportunists - OPEN University. Retrieved March 11, 2010, from Free University Courses OCW Courses OpenCourseWare Freeversity Foundation Web site: http://freeversity.org/science-and-mathematics/biology/bio113-studying-mammals-unit-6-the-opportunists-open-university.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License
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