Movement
Movement is an action by an organism or part of an organism causing a change of position or place 1.
Whole-Body Movement and Movement of Parts
| Type | Description | IGCSE example |
|---|---|---|
| Locomotion | The whole organism changes place | Walking, swimming, flight |
| Movement of a part | A part moves while the organism stays put | Cilia sweeping mucus along the trachea and bronchi |
| Growth movement | Slow, irreversible change of shape driven by differential growth | Phototropism and gravitropism in shoots and roots |
The phrase “or part of an organism” matters: rooted plants never change place as a whole, yet they move parts and grow towards or away from stimuli.
Energy and Control
Movement is expensive: the syllabus lists muscle contraction among the uses of the energy released by respiration, alongside protein synthesis, cell division, active transport, growth and nerve impulses 1. Control comes from sensitivity: electrical impulses travel along neurones to effectors, such as the flagellum of a sperm cell or the cilia of a ciliated cell. Plants have neither muscles nor nerves: auxin from the shoot tip makes cells elongate unevenly, bending the shoot towards light.
Related
- Living Thing - Entity carrying out all seven life processes.
- Organism - Individual living thing, unicellular or multicellular.
- Respiration - Source of energy for contraction.
- Sensitivity - Stimuli that trigger movement responses.
- Growth - Growth movements arise from uneven cell elongation.
- Biology - Cambridge IGCSE life-science area.
Footnotes
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Cambridge IGCSE Biology 0610 syllabus for examination in 2026, 2027 and 2028 - Movement (1.1a), uses of energy (12.1), ciliated cells (2.1.6), neurones (14.1), tropisms and auxin (14.5). ↩ ↩2