1. Heat is an environmental stress that negatively impacts human survival. One specific way it disturbs homeostasis is by dehydrating someone. When the body does not get enough water it dehydrates and causes a body to collapse.
2. One way we fight off heat is through sweating to cool down our bodies, which is a short term adaptation, but if we do not replenish our water loss, we become dehydrated. A developmental adaptation would be a persons skin color: If a person has lighter skin, then they burn and dehydrate faster while a person with darker skin is more likely to be okay in the heat. A cultural adaptation would be to wear clothing that is appropriate towards the weather such as shorts, tank tops, sandals, and hats to protect people from heat. A facultative adaptation is human skin pigmentation such as tanning and darkening of the skin color.
3. The benefits of studying human variation would be to help other cultures and people learn about preventing things such as dehydration or sun burns or anything having to do with heat. When a person explores a different habitat, they can take ideas and return them to their community to help others. For example, if people in Africa survive through the heat and sun light yet people in California cannot adapt well to the heat it is best if they learn what Africans do to survive the heat.
4. Race could be used to understand the variations of adaptations because different races do different things to adapt to their environment. Environmental influences on adaptations is a better way to understand race rather then judging a person by their skin color. For example a person could have a black skin tone yet not be African necessarily.
I like the layout of your blog post, it is very easy to read and find what the key points were. The only thing I would complain about is your #1, where you say it would cause a body to collapse... it just doesn't sound right when spoken.
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ReplyDeleteI also did heat as well. I liked your post it was very well written and put together but when you mention race in the bottom as skin color. Race doesn't necessarily just represent a skin color, race can be viewed as a persons nationally or normal habitat or environment
ReplyDeleteYes, heat stress can cause dehydration. Is there any other way it can disrupt homeostasis?
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind that you chose heat and not solar radiation as your stress. Some of your adaptations address radiation, not heat, particularly your facultative and developmental traits. A facultative trait for heat is vasodilation and a developmental would be a longer, thinner body shape (Bergmann/Allen's rules).
Good on your short term, particularly noting why this can't be continued over the long term. Your cultural trait is good as well.
Good discussion in section #3.
Your opening sentence of section #4 doesn't explain how race is useful, it just describes the adaptive approach. You are much closer to the correct answer when you talk about "
judging a person by their skin color". That is exactly correct, particularly in the use of the word "judge". Race is a social/cultural construct, not a biological one. It is subject to cultural bias. Classification of people in to races will be different across cultures depending up their own history, culture and views of the world. Because of that subjective quality, race cannot be used to understand biological traits since it is not based in biology itself.
Images?
Its funny exactly how opposite adaptations are for heat and coldness. It seems pretty obvious at first, but they are somewhat related to each other. I like how you wrote a short post, but it got all the points across and was very informative.
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