Adaptations

What are adaptations?

Adaptations are particular characteristics that enable an organism to be successful in its environment. Crowned stick insects display adverse adaptations to adjust to an environment. The adaptations of Crowned Stick Insects include; structural, physiological and behavioral adaptations.

Structural adaptations

Structural adaptations are the physical features of an organism to increase its chance of survival in an environment. The structural adaptations of our stick insects include coloured skin and patterned markings. This allows the insect to camouflage to its surroundings, disguising itself as a leaf or a stick to avoid any possible predators.


This image on the left shows the Crowned Stick Insects' ability to blend into its surrounding environment exceptionally.

Physiological adaptations

Physiological adaptations are responses to an outer stimulant to preserve equilibrium. A common example stick insects undergo is a process called parthenogenesis. This process occurs when male stick insects are absent, and so the females will lay eggs that will hatch into other female stick insects to reproduce.

Behavioural adaptation

Behavioural adaptations are behaviours that an animal develops in order to survive, or to improve reproduction. Crowned Stick Insects have a behavioural adaptation called thanatosis, which is the ability for the stick insect to play dead. In doing so, they have a better chance at surviving against possible threats.


This image on the left shows a Crowned Stick Insect in thanatosis.

Why have we chosen this method?

The 'Capture - Recapture - Abundance' method was selected due to its perfect suitability to our Crowned Stick Insect species. This method is utilised to measure the abundance of moving organisms, which is exactly what our insects are.

Capture - Recapture - Abundance

This process consists of the mark, release and recapture of our insects. Below is the method we follow.

Method

Step 1) Capture - Sample 5 different stick insects from the enclosure

Step 2) Mark and Release - Mark the organisms with a red marker (see image). Release them back into the enclosure, allowing them to mix with the remaining unmarked insects for a allotted period (one week).

Step 3) Recapture- Recapture 5 random insects from the enclosure. Record the amount of marked insects.

Step 4) Record:

  • Number captured (5)
  • Total number recaptured (5)
  • Number of marked species in recapture (0-5)

Step 5) Substitute the values into the formula:

Step 6) Calculate average population

Step 7) Compare to real population


Observations

The results highlight the overall behavioural pattern of our insects. The prevalence of relatively random marked insects throughout the results (i.e. 6.25,8.33, 12.5 and 25), highlighting the distributional patterns. That being random dispersion.