Habitats and how they change
Biology · Key Stage 2 · The School
A habitat is a fit
A HABITAT provides what its inhabitants need: food, water, shelter and somewhere to raise young. A pond suits a frog and not a camel because of what it provides, not because of how it looks. Change any one of those four and the fit weakens — which is why habitats are described by what they supply rather than by scenery.
Changing through the year
Most habitats change with the seasons. A deciduous wood is bright and open in spring, shaded in summer, littered in autumn, bare in winter, and the living things time their lives to it: bluebells flower before the canopy closes, caterpillars hatch when leaves are young, birds nest when caterpillars are plentiful. The timing matters as much as the place.
Change that causes harm
Some changes are seasonal and expected. Others are not: a pond filled in, a hedge removed, a river polluted, a wood cleared, a climate warming faster than species can shift. When change is faster than living things can adapt or move, populations fall. Naming the specific change — what was removed, and what depended on it — is more useful than saying the environment was damaged.
SPRING: blossom, nesting birds, insects hatching. SUMMER: dense leaf cover, caterpillars, shade beneath. AUTUMN: berries and nuts — the food that gets birds and mice through winter. WINTER: bare branches, most insects gone, birds relying on those berries. The same hedge supports different species at different times, which is why cutting a hedge in autumn takes away food that has to last until spring.