2. Which characteristic of living organisms best describes a startled cat jumping when it hears a door close? * will give brinley •responding to stimuli
•passing traits to offspring
•maintain homeostasis
•are made up of cells

I believe it is your first opinion, “responding to stimuli.”

Explanation:

a time line cause it goes from 685 to 978

an organism's phenotype is the  form of a trait  that it  displays. for  flowercolor, a pea  plant  can  display  a phenotype of purple or white flowers. an organism's  genotype  is the alleles of a gene it contains. based on his data, mendel concluded that a phenotype can be  determined  by more than one  genotype.