Explain how the abiotic components in each area determined what type of plants and animals lived there.

Abiotic components of an ecosystem are water, air, light, soil, and temperature.

Now think about how the availability of these things will affect what could live in a specific area.

Consider a desert ecosystem. Deserts are arid, receiving little rain (water) and have extreme temperatures (both cold and hot). Because of these conditions only certain plants and animals can live here. These plants and animals have adaptations that are specific to the environment. If you were to put an organism that does not belong in there, they would most likely die out.

Tidbit for you. The Atacama desert is one of the driest places in the world, located specifically in Chile. At one point, this place did not receive any rain for 500 years! Still plants and animals are able to live in this area. When it finally did rain, the sudden downpour caused a radical change in this ecosystem. You would think at first rain would be good, but no. Because the changes the rain brought was too drastic, it caused a devastating effect on the organisms that lived there because they were not adapted to rain.

the cladogram shown here shows similarities and differences among several classes of vertebrates. anatomically, the four have limb structure as their common ancestor. we might separate the mammals from the other three classes because they a) divergent; do not lay eggs b) identical; are warm-blooded c) varied; a four chambered heart d) homologous; have mammary glands