prairie

Examples of prairie in the following topics:

• Temperate Grasslands

  • Temperate grasslands are found throughout central North America, where they are also known as prairies, and within Eurasia, where they are known as steppes .
  • The dominant vegetation tends to consist of grasses; some prairies sustain populations of grazing animals .
  • The American bison (Bison bison), more commonly called the buffalo, is a grazing mammal that once populated American prairies in huge numbers.

• Types of Biodiversity

  • An example of a largely-extinct ecosystem in North America is the prairie ecosystem.
  • Prairies once spanned central North America from the boreal forest in northern Canada down into Mexico.
  • The variety of ecosystems on earth, from (a) coral reef to (b) prairie, enables a great diversity of species to exist.

• Simple Learned Behaviors

  • Prairie dogs typically sound an alarm call when threatened by a predator, but they become habituated to the sound of human footsteps when no harm is associated with this sound; therefore, they no longer respond to them with an alarm call.

• The Fossil Record and the Evolution of the Modern Horse

  • The series of fossils tracks the change in anatomy resulting from a gradual drying trend that changed the landscape from a forested habitat to a prairie habitat.
  • One of the trends, depicted here, is the evolutionary tracking of a drying climate and increase in prairie versus forest habitat reflected in forms that are more adapted to grazing and predator escape through running.

• Biogeography

  • Moving farther north, you would see that deserts are replaced by grasslands or prairies.