Question

Compare and contrast the ways in which plants and animals regulate heat exchange with their environments. Compare and contrast a desert plant with an alpine plant and a desert animal with an alpine animal. What are some of the similarities and differences among strategies used by plants and animals? Again, be sure you have a general introductory paragraph that sets the reader up for the essay overall, and a summary paragraph that ties it all together at the end.

Answer 1

Animals and plants live on earth and transfer energy in various forms. The most important form of energy we can experience is heat energy rather than kientic, potential, electric energy etc. A particular temperature called optimum temperature is needed for the regulation of all the biological reactions.

According to the heat regulation of the body, the animals can be divided into exothermic and endothermic animals. The heat produced in animals is dissipated into the environment as heat. Hence the heat loss occurs from the body. Perspiration or the waterloss by evaporation also takes some amount of heat from body.

Plants are poikilotherms, organisms whose internal temperatures depend solely on their external environment. According to the studies by Enquist he said that "Instead of spending energy on cooling and warming themselves, plants can change their construction to heat up slower and maintain temperatures that are much lower than the ambient temperatures around them". Hence there is a mechanism to regulate the temperature in plants also using the enzyme RuBisCo.

Most alpine plants are at vety high altitude and have to survive in low temperatures. They have various strategies and adaptations to survive in this extreme temperature without getting freezed.by increasing the amount of solutes in their tissues, known as freezing-point depression. Another method by which plants may use to avoid freezing is supercooling, which prevents ice crystallization within plant tissues. Plants get freeze tolerance ability and they often get dehydrated moving water to intercellular spaces. These plants often replace the damaged organs, by placing their meristems below ground, where temperatures are generally warmer.

In desert plants, there adaptations to reduce water loss from the plant body. The leaf surface area is reduced to prevent water loss with thorny projections and narrow and small leafs, stalk like leaves etc.