Surviving the winter

Introduction

In this unit, we study one aspect of the fluctuating nature of an organism's environment. We consider how organisms living in a temperate climate, such as that in Britain, are adapted to cope with winter. You will see that there is much diversity of adaptations among organisms, with different species coping with the demands of a fluctuating environment in quite different ways. As cyclic variations are a widespread feature of environments, the range of adaptations to them is an important source of biological diversity.

This unit is an adapted extract from the course Biology: uniformity and diversity(S204) [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]

This unit is from our archive and is an adapted extract from Biology, uniformity and diversity (S204) which is no longer taught by The Open University. If you want to study formally with us, you may wish to explore other courses we offer in this subject area.