Stimulus and Response

Why animals and plants do what they do OR A fancy way of saying cause and effect in the animal world.

Learning objectives
1. What are a stimulus and a response? 2. What is the advantage to organisms of
being able to respond to stimuli? 3. What are taxes, kineses and tropisms? 4. How does each type of response increase an organisms chances of survival?

What is a stimulus?
Stimulus: any change in an organisms environment that causes to the organism to react. It is a fancy way of saying cause.
Stimulus singular Stimuli plural Example: An animal is cold so it moves into the sun.

What is a response?
Response: how the organism reacts to a stimulus and results in a change in behavior. It is a fancy way of saying effect.
Example: Getting a drink when you are thirsty.

Examples of stimuli and their responses:

You are hungry so you eat some food A rabbit gets scared so it runs away You are cold so you put on a jacket A dog is hot so lies in the shade It starts raining so you take out an
umbrella

What does the ability of an organism to respond to stimuli do for it?

Increase the chances of survival

There are many advantages in moving towards or away from a stimulus. Can you think of some?

avoiding desiccation (drying out) avoiding predation (being eaten) finding food finding a suitable habitat (home) avoiding poisons finding suitable photosynthetic conditions

How are stimuli detected?

Special cells or organs known as
receptors.

What do receptors do?

Transform the energy of stimulus into
some form of energy that can be processed by the organism and leads to a response. Respo.nse is carried out by an effector

Communication between receptors and effectors

Chemical called hormones Animals also have a more rapid

communication the nervous system

Sequence of events in nervous system

Can you put these in order 1 minute coordinator, receptor, effector, response, stimulus

Other simple forms of response to stimuli

These include Taxes and Kineses

Taxes
A taxis (plural taxes, pronounced
"takseez") is a behavioural response by an organism (or cell) to a directional stimulus (a stimulus from a particular direction) whereby an organism moves (orientation movement) either towards (positive taxis) or away from (negative taxis) the stimulus.

Kineses
kinesis, like a taxis, is a movement or
activity of a cell or an organism in response to a stimulus. However, the movement can be in any direction or even random.

Tropisms

Plants also respond to their environment. When a plant grows towards the sun we call this phototropism .

Key words
tropism
growth in response to a stimulus Positive tropism towards the stimulus Negative tropism away from the stimulus Phototropism growth in response to the direction of light Geotropism growth in response to the direction of gravity

Types of Tropism
Task fill in the blanks with the words negative, positive and no response

stimulus tropism response shoot root

gravity
geotropism

unilateral light
phototropism

water
hydrotropism

Types of Tropism
stimulus tropism response shoot root gravity
geotropism

unilateral light
phototropism

water
hydrotropism

negative positive

positive negative

no response positive