Two characteristics of life thatcould be applied to nonliving things are response to environment and energyprocessing. Fire is a good example of a nonliving thing responding to theenvironment.
Wind, rain, and landscape affect a fires ability to self sustain.And fire requires fuel or energy processing from oxygen levels and a source forit to burn like trees, grass, etc. My conclusion is that there are severaldifferent nonliving things that fit the characteristics of life but, will notmeet all the criteria. This is what separates biotic from abiotic. I lookforward to studying the characteristics order and evolution of life the most ofthe nine. It is extremely relevant to my professional life in that I plan towork with wetland conservation and preservation. It is important to understandhow living and nonliving things interact and impact each other in theenvironment. Nonliving things impact the livelihood and success of alldifferent kinds of species and are just as important in habitats as actual life.
The three individuals I asked why adog is alive and a donut is not all gave me similar answers. This did notsurprise me as I work with biologists and all the members in my family are allin the science field. One said that a dog has internal system functions andorgans (cells) keeping it alive while the donut does not. Another answer Ireceived was being alive requires movement, internal organization, homeostasis,energy use, reproduction, and growth and development. The last person I askedstated that a dog is self aware, can express various emotion and intellect, anddepends upon food, water, sex, and sleep. From this experiment, I learned thatthere are intricate criteria for the classification of something to beconsidered alive and these criteria are always changing and being expandedupon. The discovery of pandoravirusestells us that there may be a need to add a fourth domain of life.
In thearticle, the studies suggest that 93% of the 2,500 genes in the makeup ofpandoraviruses cannot be traced back to any known lineage found in nature. Thatalone may be cause for adding viruses to the phylogenic tree. The discovery ofthese viruses indicates how little we still know about life on Earth (Dell’Amore,2017).
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