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What do all living organisms consist of? Properties of living organisms. Variety of living organisms

The entire material world around us, called nature, consists of living and non-living organisms. Let us consider their coexistence. Inanimate objects as a concept can be characterized by several levels: atoms, molecules, macro-bodies, megabases, galaxies, clusters of galaxies and finally - the universe.

But what is the primary element? Modern science has determined that the smallest "brick" is a quark, from which atoms and other elementary particles are formed.

At the same time, inanimate nature exists in two forms: substances and fields (they both have energy). The energy of matter reflects the brilliant formula of Einstein:

  • E = mC 2

The substance is in four states: solid, liquid, gaseous and as a plasma.

Live and inanimate organisms do not just interact. We will discuss this. Primarily it was only inanimate: Earth itself as a planet formed 4.5 billion years ago, and the count of the appearance of life on it began 0.5 billion years ago. As a result of the development of inanimate nature, a living one arose.

Since then, the living and inanimate nature does not just coexist - they closely interact with each other. Under the influence of living organisms in the Earth's atmosphere, the specific weight of oxygen increased and decreased - carbon dioxide. The relief has also changed thanks to the mountains of organic origin. Microorganisms have determined the process of soil formation (a modern soil suitable for agriculture, a product of their vital activity). There were deposits of oil.

Full functioning of the biosphere is impossible without living organisms. They actively contribute to the universal circulation in nature. As we see, the value of living organisms is enormous.

The emergence of life

How did life come to life on Earth? Initially for her, stocks of organic substances were created. Academician Oleksandr Ivanovich Oparin at the beginning of the last century experimentally proved the emergence under the influence of electric charges in the inanimate nature of organic matter, suitable for the "start of life". And in the middle of the same century, the American scientist Stanley Lloyd Miller (in fact, continuing the research of the Russian academician) synthesized nucleic acids - the basis of the structure of proteins. According to Oparin, the prototype of the appearance of the simplest unicellular organisms could be coacervates - self-regulating structures with oily membranes.

According to a widely accepted version, the first living organisms were brought to Earth from the outside, meteorites, 500 million years ago. The version is plausible, especially since one of their classes - "carbonaceous chondrite" - really brings bacteria and microbes to Earth. And the scientists of the Amundsen-Scott station managed to find a probable "culprit" - a bacterium of the genus Deinococcus, capable of "traveling" and "landing".

Animal world

But back to reality. Let's digress from the asphalt of megacities. It is worthwhile for us, city dwellers, to go to nature, to the country, we almost everywhere - in water, on land and in air, in soil - we meet the diversity of living organisms.

Indeed, the animal world is omnipresent. The land-air environment was inhabited by insects, spiders, animals, birds, reptiles, its population is most diverse. The aquatic habitat is dense enough, flowing and less saturated with oxygen, its inhabitants are divided into fast-floating (nekton), with a limited habitat - bottom or near-surface (benthos) distributed throughout the water column (plankton). The soil is a dense medium with stable temperature regimes, light does not enter the underground world where worms, insects, and larvae live. To life in it mole riders and moles have adapted. Animals-parasites (for example, worms) have adapted to life in the bodies of other creatures.

Classification

It is interesting that all this stirring, breathing, feeding, growing, multiplying variety - it all comes down to certain classes of living organisms. How is it classified? The view is taken as the reference point. It is the basis (the primary link) of the classification of living organisms. The greatest number of them show insects. Each year, with enviable stability, science registers about 7 thousand of their species. The species has its own habitat. The individuals forming it are similar in structure, crossed. Their offspring is capable of reproduction. The species of living organisms are not dispersed evenly across the range, but by populations, each of which has its own territory.

Such species are united into a genus. For example, the Wolves belong to wolves, coyotes, jackals, dogs, dingoes. Similar genera are united in families. The family of Dogs united the genus of wolves, foxes, arctic foxes, raccoon dogs, genus of hyena dogs. Close families, in turn, are united in a detachment. Thus, the families of the Dogs, the Viverra, the Cat, the Hyena, the Bear, the Raccoon, the Cunyi constitute the Predatory order. Classes of living organisms are united by their detachments. The detachment Mammals, in particular, will present 25 orders, let's name some of them: Predators, Rodents, Bats, Marsupials, Primates, Artiodactyls, Insectivores, Brachygraves, etc. Thus, the variety of living organisms is classified.

List of classes of animals

Let's start with our smaller brothers, with the representatives of which - cats and dogs - each of us encountered in everyday life. The aforementioned pet pets belong to the class Mammals, named for the way they feed their offspring. It has 25 detachments, 140 families, about 4,600 species. It includes a huge blue whale, and a deer, and a wolf, and a mouse.

However, the Insect class is the most numerous on earth. Suffice it to say that it prevails over the mammal class by as much as three orders of magnitude! The insect class counts about 30 orders, 1,053,578 species (as of the end of 2013). The largest groups include coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera, Semi-winged, Orthoptera.

As we can see, different classes demonstrate different properties of living organisms.

Amphibians (on the contrary, the most "narrow" class) have about 3.5 thousand species, reptiles - about 7 thousand. This small class has adapted to the environment, preferring underground and underwater life.

The Bird class unites 8.6 thousand species. They inherent plumage, both helping during the flight, and maintaining a constant body temperature. Reproduction occurs by laying eggs. By the way, did you know that the birds appeared as a result of the development of one of the branches of dinosaurs? After all, they reduced the generic properties of the giants that once reigned on Earth in a reduced format: tubular bones, keel structure of the body and, finally, a method of reproduction.

The Fish class has about 20 thousand species. They are adapted to life in the water, for which they are endowed with gills and fins.

Animal Records

Indeed, a man is pleased with the diversity of living organisms that inhabit the earth and the seas with the oceans. Sometimes nature demonstrates real phenomena. Let's consider some of them. The largest animal is a blue whale, reaching a length of thirty-five meters. Even the new-born kiten already draws two tons. The fastest bird, a peregrine falcon, reaches a speed of 350 km / h in a diving flight. Recognized builders, termites, build their "skyscrapers" -termits with a height of up to 15 m; Beavers, dam builders, are not inferior to them - for example, such a dam (Montana state) is 750 m long. The cheetah at the moment of its throw reaches a speed of 160 km / h. The best "actor" in the animal world is the Indian mantis. He externally is extremely similar to the flower of an orchid, and insect-victims take this insect-predator for a source of nectar.

The longest snake is the South American anaconda - up to 8 meters. Proteins are considered to be extremely reliable barometers: in 10 hours they feel the beginning of a storm, which they give out by their behavior. The largest flying bird, the swan-trumpeter, weighs 22 kg, the smallest, the hummingbird, - 20 g. The loudest voice in the monkey-howler (American tropics): it can be heard for 5 kilometers. The most sensitive beast is a lynx, it clearly distinguishes sounds at a distance of one kilometer. This list can be continued - page by page.

Properties

The properties of living organisms are identified in the course of research as generic features that identify them and separate them from inanimate nature. Scientists-biologists managed to analytically generalize at the level of properties the diversity of the animal world. Indeed, all living organisms have unified (generic) properties:

  • Single chemical composition. In the composition of living organisms the same chemical elements are encountered as in inanimate nature.
  • Outdoor character. They, on the one hand, use external sources of nutrition and energy, and on the other hand, waste of their vital activity, and they themselves become a part of the environment after death.
  • Carry out self-regulation, self-organization in relation to external factors.
  • Self-reproducing, and each generation reproduces the properties of living organisms that gave birth to it.
  • Variable in order to better adapt to the environment, adapting to its changes for effective survival.
  • Grow and develop. If growth should be understood as an increase in length and mass, then development is a change in the most diverse characteristics of a living organism.
  • Excitability. This property determines the information self-co-ordination of the organism, as well as the regulation of its characteristics of interaction with the environment.
  • Discreteness. Every living organism can be represented as a collection of individual tissues, systems, organs, cells.

It should also be noted that all the above signs of living organisms only then characterize them when they interact in a complex manner. Taken separately, they are not unique and inherent to inanimate nature. So, for example, a common reservoir has an exchange of energy and substances, growth is a property of crystals, celestial bodies - stars, as is known, are subject to evolution.

Of what all living organisms are composed

As you know, all living organisms have a cellular structure. The animals themselves are small cells: from 10 to 100 microns. Cells of different tissues differ in shape (for example, skin cells are goblet or flat, blood - oval, and muscle - elongated).

The cell itself is surrounded by a membrane, a shell of "directed selective action." It works like a checkpoint: it lets some substances inside and out - others. The interior of the cell is filled with a moving dense and granular fluid, the cytoplasm. Note that the cell of a living organism also has a certain cytoplasmic structure, but we will consider it later. The "bubble transport" moves along the cytoplasm - vacuoles, which carry nutrients and remove the products of vital activity.

Surrounded by the cytoplasm, there is a round, dense nucleus in the cell - the storage of chromosomes. They control and regulate reproduction and heredity transmitted from the mother cell - the daughter.

Chromosomal distinctions of living organisms

The external signs of living organisms considered by us above - the ability to move, grow and develop, reproduce - can be supplemented by those that are not visible to the unaided eye, internal ones. Take, for example, the number of chromosomes (structures containing DNA, located in the nucleus of the cell). It is noteworthy that in cells of different organisms they are present in different amounts. A person has 46, a gorilla has 48, a horse has 64, a dog has 78. A butterfly has 380 chromosomes, and the Myrmecia pilosula is "deprived" by them: the female has 2 of them, and the male has only one.

Cytoplasm as a collection of organelles

Continuing to study at the level of the cell, from which all living organisms are composed, we consider through the microscope the cytoplasm. We, armed with optics, will see that it is heterogeneous and represents a set of special cellular organs (organelles). The endoplasmic reticulum consists of numerous membranes, penetrated by minute channels. This network is grouped "protein factories" - compact rounded ribosomes. Another organelle, named after the Italian scientist Camilo Golgi by the Golgi apparatus. It is a stack of membrane-pouches, forms fats and carbohydrates. "Stomach cells", lysosomes, digest carbohydrates, proteins, fats. They, grouped around the splittable elements, constitute the digestive vacuole.

Another organoid responsible for heredity is the cell center, the basis of which is two oblong round bodies.

All the organelles of a living cell work in a coordinated and purposeful way, ensuring its vital functions. This process is so complex that a separate branch of science - cytology - studies what all living organisms consist of.

Basic fabrics

Previous our reasoning determined the structure of the smallest "brick" of the body - the cells. However, the structure of the organism can also be considered at the tissue level.

Similar in their structure and functionality, cells covering the bodies of animals, their internal organs, are called epithelial. These protective cells fit tightly to each other, which does not prevent them from producing secretion, secretion of waste substances and absorption interacting with them.

As you can see, living organisms on the Earth have an uneven tissue structure. Connective tissues form the skeleton, the framework of the body. These include bones, cartilage, ligaments, tendons. The connective tissues include blood. It performs a dual function - the airway (supplying the organs with oxygen and taking away the waste carbon dioxide) and the waiter (supplying the "nutrients" from the "kitchen" -the nutrients of their clients-organs-and taking them from the organs to the "eaten" organs at the cellular level (microslags )).

Muscular tissues are "body hydraulics". They are responsible for motor activity and are also a protection and support for internal organs.

Nerve tissues consisting of special cells - neurons - perform all the "fine tuning of the living organism": both internal coordination and synchronization of the work of its organs, and the coordinated perception of the senses by the signals of the external environment. Thus, on the other hand, by defining the larger, what all living organisms are composed of, one can also say: from tissues. They are studied by the science of histology.

Conclusion

Nature demonstrates not casual combinations of animal species, but regular types of established cohabitation. Any kind of animal lives in its characteristic natural community. Often, purposeful, but ill-considered human activity destroys these established, established connections. Unconditional harm is caused by forced deforestation, technological pollution of rivers. "Achievements" of the last centuries is the destruction of tens of thousands of species of animals. Science is called upon not just to stop people by understanding them with what, properly speaking, the natural environment they interact with, but also to harmonize these links. It is no accident that the biology of living organism (6th grade) is studying the school curriculum: the desire to protect the surrounding nature is instilled in Russians from childhood.

At the same time, at the end of the 20th century, the interaction between man and nature is determined by the factor that, according to Academician Vernadsky, the biosphere has changed qualitatively, enriched with reasonable human activity, evolving and becoming a noosphere (a sphere that takes into account, among other things, the aspect of human concern for the surrounding animal world ).

This is evidenced by reserves and national parks, scientific work on the study and restoration of rare species, the popularization of biology. Among the species saved from extinction are bison, bison, marsupial bears, sables, monk seals. The list can be continued.

Speaking about the cellular theory, we can say that a modern technology for creating stem cells from skin cells of animals has been developed by modern biology for the rescue of endangered species. Further, the obtained stem cells can be transformed into gametes - ovules and spermatozoa of animals, and with their help completely recreate the embryo of the animal.

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