Section 1 a) Key Words

Asexual reproduction: Reproduction involving one parent. The offspring produced is an exact copy, or clone, of the parent, as the DNA does not change.

Excretion: The ability to remove waste substances from the body, e.g carbon dioxide during respiration is exhaled in animals, and urination removes toxic substances such as urea from the body. Plants drop their leaves as a way of removing toxins.

Growth: The ability to increase in cell size or number as the organism matures. Baby animals grow into adults, then stop growing, but plants will continue growing throughout their whole lives.

Life processes: The seven characteristics that all living organisms share; movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth, reproduction, excretion and nutrition.

Movement: The ability to change position or move that allows them to obtain nutrients or avoid predators. Plants can move their leaves to face the sun and open and close their petals, while animals have total physical mobility; they can move their entire body from one place to another.

Nutrition: Obtaining nutrients required for life processes such as respiration through consumption of other organisms or photosynthesis. Most organisms must eat or absorb other organisms to obtain nutrients, but plants can photosynthesize- create food from sunlight.

Organisms: An individual life form that may be multi- or uni-cellular that carries out the seven life processes, e.g. plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, protoctists.

Sensitivity: The ability to sense a change in surroundings such as light, temperature, or sound, and react to it. An animal can usually react quickly to stimuli, e.g. moving away from a hot object, but plants react more slowly, e.g. growing in response to the direction of the light.

Sexual reproduction: Involving two parents, in which DNA from each of them combine to produce an individual sharing qualities from both parents.

Reproduction: The ability to produce live offspring through asexual or sexual reproduction. e.g. animals create babies, plants produce seeds. This allows the organism to carry on the existence of the species for future generations.

Respiration: The ability to produce energy from nutrients, e.g. aerobic respiration: glucose + oxygen --> carbon dioxide + water (+ energy), or anaerobic respiration: glucose --> lactic acid (+ energy). This allows the organism to carry out other processes.

Sensitivity: The ability to sense a change in the environment (a stimulus) and react to it. A plant can grow in the direction of the light, an animal can sense predator or prey and move away from it. Reflex actions happen involuntarily, e.g. reactions to temperature or sharp objects.