Synanthropic plants and animals comenius project

Synanthrope plants and animals

Synanthropes is a term applied to species of wild animals and plants of various kinds that live near, and benefit from, an association with humans and the somewhat artificial habitats that humans create around them. Those habitats include houses, gardens, farms, roadsides, garbage dumps, and so on.

The category of synanthrope includes a large number of what humans regard as pest species. It does not include domesticated animals.

Examples of synanthropes would be rodents, sparrows, pigeons, lice, and other urban animals. Domesticated animals such as cows, goats and dogs are not described in this way.

In plants, synanthropes are classified into two main types - apophytes and anthropophytes

Apophytes are synanthropic species that are native in origin. They can be subdivided into the following:

1.Cultigen apophytes - spread by cultivation methods2.Ruderal apophytes - spread by development of marginal areas3.Pyrophyte apophytes - spread by fires4.Zoogen apophytes - spread by grazing animals5.Substitution apophytes - spread by logging or voluntary extension

Anthropophytes are synanthropic species of foreign origin, whether introduced voluntarily or involuntarily. They can be subdivided into the following:

Archaeophytes - introduced before the end of the 15th centuryKenophytes - introduced after the 15th centuryEphemerophytes - anthropophytic plants that appear episodicallySubspontaneous - voluntarily introduced plants that have escaped cultivation and survived in the wild without further human intervention for a certain period.Adventive - involuntarily introduced plants that have escaped cultivation and survived in the wild without further human intervention for a certain period.Naturalized or Neophytes - involuntarily introduced plants that now appears to thrive along with the native flora indefinitely.

The oriental cockroach

often called "waterbugs" since they prefer dark, moist places. They can often be found around decaying organic matter, and in sewers, drains, damp basements, porches, and other damp locations. They can be found outside in bushes, under leaf groundcover, under mulch, and around other damp places outdoors. They are major household pests in parts of the northwest, mid-west, and southern United States.

The House Sparrow is closely associated with humans. They are believed to have become associated with humans around 10,000 years ago. Subspecies bactrianus is least associated with humans and considered to be evolutionarily closer to the ancestral non-commensal populations. Usually, it is regarded as a pest, since it consumes agricultural products and spreads disease to humans and their domestic animals. Even birdwatchers often hold it in little regard because of its molestation of other birds. In most of the world the House Sparrow is not protected by law. Attempts to control House Sparrows include the trapping, poisoning, or shooting of adults; the destruction of their nests and eggs; or less directly, blocking nest holes and scaring off sparrows with noise, glue, or porcupine wire. However, the House Sparrow can be beneficial to humans as well, especially by eating insect pests, and attempts at the large-scale control of the House Sparrow have failed.

The House Sparrow

HouseflyHouse flies feed on liquid or semiliquid substances beside solid material which has been softened by saliva or vomit. Because of their large intake of food, they deposit feces constantly, one of the factors that makes the insect a dangerous carrier of pathogens. Although they are domestic flies, usually confined to human habitations, they can fly for several miles from the breeding place. They are active only in daytime, and rest at night, e.g., at the corners of rooms, ceiling hangings, cellars, and barns, where they can survive the coldest winters by hibernation, and when spring arrives, adult flies are seen only a few days after the first thaw.

OpossumLike raccoons, opossums can be found in urban environments, where they eat pet food, rotten fruit, and human garbage. Though sometimes mistakenly considered to be rats, opossums are not closely related to rodents. They rarely transmit diseases to humans, and are surprisingly resistant to rabies, mainly because they have lower body temperatures than most placental mammals. In addition, opossums limit the spread of Lyme disease, as they successfully kill off most disease carrying ticks that feed on them

Brown ratLikely originating from the plains of Asia, northern China and Mongolia, the brown rat spread to other parts of the world sometime in the Middle Ages. The question of when brown rats became commensal with humans remains unsettled, but as a species, they have spread and established themselves along routes of human migration and now live almost everywhere humans do.

White StorkThe nominate race of the White Stork has a wide although disjunct summer range across Europe, clustered in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in the west, and much of eastern and central Europe, with 25 percent of the world's population concentrated in Poland, as well as parts of western Asia. The asiatica population of about 1450 birds is restricted to a region in central Asia between the Aral Sea and Xinjiang in western China. The Xinjiang population is believed to have become extinct around 1980. Migration routes extend the range of this species into many parts of Africa and India. Some populations adhere to the eastern migration route, which passes across Israel into eastern and central Africa.

XX Secondary School in Gdańsk in Poland

Supervision: Agnieszka Jackiewicz

Consultation: Beata Piełowska

Authors: Michał Krawczyk, Artur Bystrzyński, Marta Szeliga

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanthrope• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Stork• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_opossum• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_cockroach• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housefly• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_rat• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Sparrow

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