The Diverse Landscapes of Life :: Biology Essays Research Papers

The Diverse Landscapes of Life Living organisms have been found to exist in many diverse environments on this planet; places where perhaps no human had thought to look before. Sometimes life is found because of the wild imaginations of a few curious people – other times it is stumbled upon nearly by accident. This paper will explore two seemingly unlikely landscapes of life, and will highlight the successes of discovering new living organisms in terms of expanding the array of possibility and our perception of the question "What is Life?" One environment receiving a lot of attention from scientists is the bottom of the ocean. Earlier in history it was thought that no creature could survive under the immense pressure and the total darkness of the ocean. The landscape remained untouched by humans, because without that sense of possibility for life, the technology was not created to explore the area. Until finally, in 1972, studies conducted near the Galapagos Islands reported vents, or hot water plumes. Now that something unexpected had been found, curiosity, possibility and new questions arose. The search began to accelerate along with the technology. A deep-sea robot named Alvin was sent exploring and a whole array of bottom dwellers was found. There were giant worms, clams and mussels (1). Once a community of living organisms has been found in a foreign environment, explanations will start rolling out. These hypotheses generally attempt to compare the system of life to our own systems – grappling for similarities among the resources of the new landscape those we are already familiar with. For instance, in forests and jungles (environments which are very understandable to us) there are some animals that can climb or fly to the tops of the trees where the fruit is. Other animals must stay on the ground, and so they live off of fruit which has fallen out of the tree. When a few organisms were found in the depths of the sea, it was first conjectured that they ate food that floated down to them from the "lighted regions of the ocean" (1), which seems very similar to the configuration of the familiar woodland food-system. This story was adequate until it was discovered that entire "cities" of creatures were thriving down at the bottom of the ocean – biologists had to come up with a new story. There are hydrothermal vents called black smokers which let off heat and chemicals from the bottom of the ocean.