¶ … evolution and natural selection is the addition of information. The process of evolution requires massive amounts of new information be added to an existing gene pool. What most people refer to as evolution is, in fact, natural selection. Natural selection occurs when genes that already exist in an animals' DNA, or sometimes on defective genes that have lost information (called mutation) are somehow altered. Neither process adds information to the gene pool so cannot be considered to be evolution. The evolutionary process is a slow and meticulous one and is preceded by numerous incidents of natural selection. True evolution is truly rare and takes place over the span of many years. Natural selection occurs far more frequently and can occur in the space of several generations. Natural field experiments are efforts by the scientific community to apply the scientific method to real life situations. This process allows scientists to test products, theories, and experiments that cannot be fully and adequately tested in a laboratory setting. Field experiments allow the same procedures that are used in the laboratory to be used on real life subjects. Field experiments have been used extensively for many years in some educational disciplines such as geology and anthropology but its use has taken on increased use in the other sciences and social sciences as well. The field of ecology is a natural for the use of field experiments. Field experiments allow ecologist to not only use manipulation as they would in the laboratory but also to witness the effects of their experimentation in a natural setting. Critics of the use of field experiments in the study of ecology argue that experimenters may alter the natural environment so severely as to make the findings irrelevant....

To counter-balance this possibility, some ecologists duplicate the experiments in the laboratory and in the field.
3. Water is a significant factor in the process of photosynthesis because water is one of the reactants. If a plant is not receiving adequate water, for whatever reason, the plant leaves and the plant may become dehydrated. When dehydration occurs, the stoma on the leaves will close shut in an effort to conserve the water that the plant has remaining as water is ordinarily escaping from the plant through the stoma. When the stoma close this also prevents CO2 present in the air to enter the plant and the process of photosynthesis is stalled. The importance of water supply and the function of stoma in photosynthesis is demonstrated by how plants in dry areas have adapted to preserve water. These plants have a waxy coating on the surface of their leaves that reduces water loss so that the water is conserved to make it available for the photosynthetic reaction to occur.

4. For a term that is used so frequently in science the term is still hard to explain. When the term is used it is intended to explain populations and not individual organisms and is meant to explain the areas where population members live, eat, and nearly every other aspect of how populations interact with their surroundings. In speaking of any niche there are two different dimensions: the fundamental and realized. When speaking of a species' fundamental niche, this represents all the places that such species could live and all the things that such species could eat. A species niche can be very broad as many species are capable of living in a variety of locations. It is also true that the fundamental niche of different species overlap. No species of animal lives alone. What…