The document discusses unifying themes in the study of life, highlighting how they illustrate the connections among living organisms and their interactions with the environment. It defines an organism and outlines key characteristics necessary for survival, including evolution, homeostasis, metabolism, growth, response to stimuli, and reproduction. The document also emphasizes the importance of interactions among organisms, leading to the development of populations, communities, and ecosystems, studied within the field of ecology.

1. UNIFYING THEMES
IN THE STUDY OF
LIFE
Describe how unifying themes (e.g., structure
and function, evolution, and ecosystems) in
the study of life show the connections among
living things and how they interact with each
other and with their environment. (S11/12LT-
IIa-3)

2. WHAT IS
AN
ORGANISM
?

3. An organism refers to a living
thing that has an organized structure, can
react to stimuli, reproduce, grow, adapt,
and maintain homeostasis. An organism
would, therefore, be any animal, plant,
fungus, protist, bacterium, or archaeon
on earth. These organisms may be
classified in various ways.

4. Organisms in order to
survive must possess
characteristics for survival. These
characteristics are then
enumerated into different unifying
themes.

5. UNIFYING
THEMES
OF LIFE

6. HIGH
DEGREE
OF
ORGANIZATI
ON

7. There is a hierarchy of
increasing complexity
within organism
structure, from the
molecular level to the
macro level

8. EVOLUTIONA
RY
ADAPTATIO
N

9. Evolutionary
adaptation, or simply
adaptation, is the
adjustment of organisms
to their environment in
order to improve their
chance at survival in that
environment

10. REGULATION
AND
HOMEOSTASI
S

11. homeostasis
refers to the self-
regulating process by
which biological
systems tend to
maintain stability while
adjusting to conditions
that are optimal for
survival

12. ACQUISITION
AND USE OF
ENERGY

13. Metabolism refers to
the sum of all chemical
processes that maintains
the living state of an
organism. It involves taking
in substances, breaking it
down to minute particle then
absorb by the body and use
as energy or material for
body construction. This
might be anabolism or
catabolism.

14. GROWTH
AND
DEVELOPME
NT

15. Growth refers to
the change that involves
physical change such as
size. Development on
the other hand refers to
the growth in function
and capability.
All organism
undergone life cycle from
juvenile to maturity.

16. ABILITY TO
RESPOND TO
STIMULI

17. Stimulus refers to a
thing that evokes a
specific functional
reaction in an organ or
tissue.
Every organisms
and organs has specific
reflex on each stimulus.
Failure to response
immediately to a stimulus

18. REPRODUCTI
ON

19. Reproduction refers to
the production of offspring –
either sexual or asexual.
Reproduction involves the
passing of genes from
parents to offspring.
Reproduction is a
fundamental feature of all
known life; each individual
organism exist as the result
of reproduction.

20. EVOLUTI
ON

21. Evolution refers to
the change in the physical
and heritable traits of
organisms over successive
generations. Organisms
change over time to adapt
to their environment to
survive. Extinction on the
other hand happens when
organism fail to adapt and
evolve from that

22. DIVERSITY
AND UNITY

23. No man is an
island. All organisms
need to interact with
each other to prosper
and survive. These
interactions later on
develops to
relationships and further
develop defined
characteristics that

24. Group of organisms forms
population and later on collectively
turns into community then to
biodiversity and lastly, a group of
biodiversity as it interacted with will
then form into Ecosystem. A study
of Ecosystem is termed ECOLOGY.

25. ECOLOGY is the branch of biology that deals
with the study of living organisms and their
relationships with each other and their environment

26. Output 1
in a drawing, illustrate the unifying themes of life.
Include all unifying themes on your illustartion