Adaptations

Ciliate protists live in aquatic environments, that includes anywhere that contains liquid water, such as oceans, lakes, marine sediments, ponds, rivers, and even soils. (Introduction to the Ciliata, no date)

This is because ciliate protists do not have any specialised organelles/membrane-bound organelles to meet their oxygen demands, as it is not required. So, they can live in low concentrations of oxygen, such as water. Living in aquatic environments makes it easier for ciliate protists to reproduce through binary fission and conjugation, as they play a crucial role in energy flow and transportation within aquatic environments.(Prezi, no date)

Some unicellular organisms require flagellum for locomotion. For a ciliate protist, this is not the case. They have cilia which are beneficial for fast diffusion and for a large surface area. They also lack cell walls, as cell walls provide rigidity. Due to cilia being used as locomotion to swim, it allows more flexibility and adaptability to move through different types of environments like plankton in the water. They use a process called phagocytosis to ingest and digest food and use their cilia to collect their food into the cytostome of a ciliate protist.

Ciliate protists are heterotrophic, so they get their nutrition by consuming other organisms, like bacteria, small algae, or other protists. (Dopheide et al., 2009) Protists are located near the bottom of the food chain in nature (just above the bacteria), which plays a crucial role in sustaining the higher eukaryotes in fresh and marine waters.

Ciliate protists are in the phylum level of Ciliophora. Ciliates are mainly distinguished by their specialised features like their large number of short-haired cilia, used for transportation and movement. They have closely related species like alveolates.

Alveolata is a supergroup of protists, and they are specialised with alveolar sacs. They include three main groups (Apicomplexa, Dinoflagellata, and Ciliophora) in the Alveolata. (Alveolates (dinoflagellates, ciliates and apicomplexans) and Rhizarians are the most common microbial eukaryotes in temperate Appalachian karst caves, 2022)

 Both Alveolata and ciliate protists share a common feature of a shared system of sacs, called alveoli. (Introduction to the alveolates, no date)

(Meduzanol, no date)

Mountain gorillas live in high-altitude forests and mainly bamboo forested habitats, at elevations of 8,000 to 13,000 feet. (Mountain Gorilla, no date) The reason why they live in high-altitude areas is due to having thicker fur than other gorillas. Their fur protects but also helps to survive in a habitat where temperatures often drop below freezing, such as rainforests.

Mountain gorillas eat mainly 85% of vegetation that consists near the high-altitude forests, like leaves, shoots, and stems, so they tend to stay in upper areas of the rainforest.

Mountain gorillas have some physical adaptations such as thick long fur. This prevents them from getting any diseases and insect bites, as well as protection from being cold in the rainforests. Gorillas have individual nose prints just like human fingerprints, so they are all unique to each individual gorilla. (African Gorilla Tours, 2024). They have flat teeth which are beneficial for them to use for chewing and grinding cellulose.(Langley, 2015).

In addition, they have strong muscular arms for locomotion and to gather foliage, as they are always climbing up and down trees. Surprisingly, mountain gorillas don’t drink water/have a low fresh water requirement, due to succulent vegetation, that they get from moisture from food and morning dew. (Adaptation of mountain gorillas in rainforest habitats, 2024) This has caused them to be mainly herbivores, so they eat only plants, due to adaptation of living in rainforests and having a short digestive tract.

Mountain gorillas also use behavioural adaptations like body language, vocalisation and expressive faces which allow them to convey emotions, needs and desires to their members or the same species. Expressions such as staring are shown as aggression, or hitting their chest to communicate and socialise. They adapt to their environment by existing in vegetation, they do not expand their energy by chasing and killing prey due to being herbivores. (Polly, 2023) Therefore, their opposable thumbs help gather plants to eat and large arm muscles are used for climbing trees, knuckle-walking and defence.  (Gorilla Adaptations: Lesson for Kids, no date)

(File: Mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) eating.jpg – Wikimedia Commons, 2016)

Gorillas have more than 500 species around the world. Studies have shown in 2001, in mitochondrial DNA research, there was a reclassification and an addition of two subspecies: the eastern lowland gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri) and the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei).(All about the Gorilla – Scientific Classification | United Parks & Resorts, no date). Mountain gorillas are in the primate order in the taxon levels. All members of the primate order descended from animals, had a common factor in spending much of their time in tropical forests.(Gorilla Evolution, 2024). Most gorillas mainly originated in Africa, from proto-primates who lived at the end of the Cretaceous period. Gorillas are known to have shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees and humans. (Tocheri et al., 2016)