Succession and Natural Selection

Succession and Natural Selection

SCI/275

AXIA-University Online Phoenix

After watching the succession animation I found it very helpful and fun to see how an ecosystem can transform. I identify this animation as a secondary succession. Secondary succession is a process started by an event that reduces an already established ecosystem to a smaller population of species which occurs on preexisting soil. This situation started as a forest then an event happened, flooding, this made a river in a forest to a pond then a bog forest. The beaver dam was a key element in transforming this ecosystem. The second part of this checkpoint is to propose a hypothesis to explain how limbless salamanders evolved according to Darwin's theory of natural selection. Things evolve to become better fitting for their fight for survival. People can hypothesize that salamanders acquired water skills because of the food on land may have become depleted. So they started to venture in the water for a new source of food, but also exposed them to all new kinds of predators. These newly evolved attributes can be formed because of the need for food, the need to protect itself and to become more adapted to its surroundings. The need to become adaptable in the water may be the reason for the loss of the lower limbs, to be quicker and more agile. This is what happens to a species in natural selection, if the species cannot evolve or survive, it will die out.