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Ever Wonder About Worm Sex? - Science World

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Ever Wonder About Worm Sex? - Science World

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Ever Wonder About Worm Sex? - Science World

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One morning I noticed two worms stuck together on the ground. Before I got a good eyeful, my dog rudely interrupted them and they hastily retreated into their burrows. Were they soil mates discussing Nietzsche or niches over a cup of dirt? It didn’t take much burrowing into the interwebs to realize…

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How Tech Reveals the ‘Secret Lives’ of Animals - The New York Times

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How Tech Reveals the ‘Secret Lives’ of Animals - The New York Times

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How Tech Reveals the 'Secret Lives' of Animals

Catrin Einhorn Reporting on wildlife and biodiversity

A new report this week, in the journal Conservation Biology, looks at the opportunities and challenges of tech in wildlife conservation. Among the findings was the need for open data repositories. "We saw that there's a ton of willingness to share and collaborate," said Talia Speaker, one of the authors and research lead at WildLabs, a group focused on conservation technology. "But a big part of that is we need to invest in the infrastructure to enable that collaboration because right now, tons of ecologists and conservationists have like literal hard drives of data in their desk drawers that are just sitting there wasting away."

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How Tech Reveals the 'Secret Lives' of Animals

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How Tech Reveals the 'Secret Lives' of Animals A new report this week, in the journal Conservation Biology, looks at the opportunities and challenges of tech in wildlife conservation. Among the findings was the need for open data repositories.

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Class Echinoidea | Echinoderms | The Diversity of Animal Life

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Class Echinoidea | Echinoderms | The Diversity of Animal Life

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Class Echinoidea | Echinoderms | The Diversity of Animal Life

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Class Echinoidea, Echinoderms in The Diversity of Animal Life

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What are zebra mussels and why should we care about them?

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What are zebra mussels and why should we care about them?

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Zebra mussels are an invasive, fingernail-sized mollusk that is native to fresh waters in Eurasia. Their name comes from the dark, zig-zagged stripes on each shell.

Zebra mussels probably arrived in the Great Lakes in the 1980s via ballast water that was discharged by large ships from Europe. They have spread rapidly throughout the Great Lakes region and into the large rivers of the eastern Mississippi drainage. They have also been found in Texas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California.

Zebra mussels negatively impact ecosystems in many ways. They filter out algae that native species need for food and they attach to--and incapacitate--native mussels. Power plants must also spend millions of dollars removing zebra mussels from clogged water intakes.

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What are zebra mussels and why should we care about them?

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Zebra mussels are an invasive, fingernail-sized mollusk that is native to fresh waters in Eurasia. Their name comes from the dark, zig-zagged stripes on each shell.Zebra mussels probably arrived in the Great Lakes in the 1980s via ballast water that was discharged by large ships from Europe.

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Hermaphrodite Article - BIOLOGY JUNCTION

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Hermaphrodite Article - BIOLOGY JUNCTION

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Hermaphrodite Article - BIOLOGY JUNCTION

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Battle of the Hermaphrodites Sexes Clash Even When Sharing the Same Body DUELING FLATWORMS. Two hermaphroditic flatworms, Pseudobiceros bedfordi, each with pale, side-by-side penises, show their undersides as they square off to mate. Michiels Many snails, slugs, and worms are so-called internally…

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Get Started Kit – Teach Basic Words – FluentPet

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Get Started Kit – Teach Basic Words – FluentPet

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FluentPet Talking Buttons

Start With a Few Key Words

With six FluentPet Classic Sound Buttons and three HexTiles, this kit lets you create a soundboard and gives you everything you need to start teaching your learner key words like "potty", "water", "play", and "outside".

FluentPet HexTiles

Organize Words to Simplify Learning

HexTiles keep a firm grip on your FluentPet Sound Buttons and organize them by word category.

The Free Get Started With Buttons Guide

Read and Download our Free Guide To Teaching Dogs and Cats to Talk with Buttons.

What is Button Bootcamp?

You can teach them.
We can help.

Jump start teaching your dog or cat to talk with confidence by attending our 30-minute interactive Button Bootcamp, a $40 value which is free with your purchase.

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Learn how to teach them to start communicating with buttons.

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Access to Teaching Resources

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Get Started with six buttons and three HexTiles, this kit lets you create a soundboard and gives you everything you need to start teaching your learner key words like "potty", "water", "play", and "outside".

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These Singing Lemurs Have Rhythm - The New York Times

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These Singing Lemurs Have Rhythm - The New York Times

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Madagascar’s Got Talent: Lemurs That Sing With Rhythm (Published 2021)

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For the first time, researchers have found a nonhuman animal that seems to have a sense of the beat.

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Youth Design Challenge – Biomimicry Institute

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Youth Design Challenge – Biomimicry Institute

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Zooplankton ~ MarineBio Conservation Society

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Zooplankton ~ MarineBio Conservation Society

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Zooplankton ~ MarineBio Conservation Society

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Plankton is composed of the phytoplankton (the plants of the sea) and zooplankton (zoh-plankton) which are typically the tiny animals found near the surface in aquatic environments.

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Walking through a forest, you bend to pet a moss-covered boulder with your hand. A thin layer of water from the moss' teeny-tiny leaves wets your fingers. If you were to shrink yourself down small enough, so that each moss leaf looks like an airplane wing, you'd be in a whole new world. At that size, water looks like a thick gel that, after a rain, would cover everything in a see-through barrier. Moving through that layer of water as if it were moving under a blanket, you'd find it. The cute, the clumsy, the nearly indestructible...the tardigrade.

What is a Tardigrade?

Tardigrades are micro-animals that look like a cross between a badger and a caterpillar, and move like they're made of jelly. They are so small that you need a microscope to truly appreciate them; most are smaller than a dot made with a pencil. They have potato-shaped bodies, stumpy legs, and a clumsy walk. Because of their lumpy shape, some people call them "moss piglets" or "water bears".

However, tardigrades are very different from pigs or bears. Scientists who study how animals are related found that tardigrades are more like insects than pigs, bears, or potatoes. But, they definitely aren't insects. They are so different from any animal out there, that they have been given their own group name: the phylum Tardigrada. About 1,000 species of tardigrades are known to science, and experts think there are at least 10,000 more to discover!

Living the Wet Life

Tardigrades are aquatic, which means that they need to be surrounded by water to live. Some species live in bodies of water like oceans, seas, lakes, or ponds. Because tardigrades are so small, they stay in places where they can't be swept away by a strong current. You might find them between grains of sand, among water plants called algae, or living inside barnacles.

Being a small aquatic creature has its perks. Just a little bit of water is all they need to make a home. That's why many species of water bears live on land. Some live in the watery layer that forms between dead tree leaves on a forest floor. Many live in mosses or lichens that trap water between their leaves and ruffles. Because they are not too fussy, they can be found all over the world. They live in lichen in the Arizona desert, and in moss in parking lots in Japan.

Tardigrades Get Extreme

As you might already know, tardigrades are kind of famous. Scientists have been charmed by tardigrades because they can survive conditions that are very hot, cold, or dry. Scientist have even flown them through the vacuum of space. They hope to find out the secrets of tardigrade toughness, and use it to make medicines or to toughen up human cells.

Tardigrades that live on land are the best at surviving extreme conditions. Mosses and leaves often dry out, leaving tardigrades with no water. Some tardigrades can also survive in places that freeze from time to time. You might find them in moss along a stream in Greenland, or in meltwater on Antarctic glaciers.

But, these water bears are not extremophiles. Extremophiles are things that like extreme habitats. But tardigrades can only survive them. Tardigrades that stay dry or frozen for too long will eventually die.

Sleeping to Survive

When you're uncomfortably cold or hot, how do you deal with it? Maybe you put on a sweater, or drink some warm or cold water, or talk about it. Or maybe you get out of the situation, move indoors, or try to distract yourself.

But if you're a tardigrade, and you happen to live in a patch of moss that has no sweaters or air conditioning, your options are limited. Tardigrades are mostly made of water, so when the water they live in dries up, so does the tardigrade. If the water they live in freezes, the tardigrade has no choice but to turn into a tardi-popsicle.

This kind of thing would kill most animals. If you were to dry up or freeze like a tardigrade, your cells would break apart beyond repair. But tardigrades have mastered the art of self-protection.

As the environment turns harsh, their bodies make particles that protect their cells. Then, as they're freezing or drying up, they basically go into such a deep sleep that they're nearly dead. In a few weeks or years, when the environment is back to being wet and un-frozen, they slowly awake. Their bodies fix the damage that occurred during sleep, and they wake up without (it seems) having aged a single day. This deep-sleep superpower is called cryptobiosis. The word cryptobiosis comes from the Ancient Greek words kruptós meaning secret or hidden, and bíos meaning life.

Some tardigrades, when in their cryptobiotic sleep, can survive boiling temperatures for up to an hour. They can also survive being frozen to nearly three times colder than the coldest temperature ever recorded on earth's surface. Some have even been blasted with fifty times the radiation that would kill a human, or squeezed at a pressure one thousand times harder than a very hard fist punch. When they woke up, these cute little creatures just went on living, like nothing even happened. This sleeping superpower makes them one of the toughest animals on earth.

Additional images via Wikimedia Commons.

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Tardigrades are some of the toughest animals on earth. They can survive freezing, drying up, radiation, and space, all while being smaller than the tip of a pencil.

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What Do Flies See Out of Their Compound Eye? | Animals.mom.com

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What Do Flies See Out of Their Compound Eye? | Animals.mom.com

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i Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images

Flies, such as the common housefly (Musca domestica) look at the world in quite a different way than humans do. The structure and function of a fly's eye are completely different from ours, and so they see shapes, motion and color differently. Flies are also able to see light in a way humans cannot.

Structure of a Compound Eye

Compound eyes are made up of thousands of individual visual receptors, called ommatidia. Each ommatidium is a functioning eye in itself, and thousands of them together create a broad field of vision for the fly. Each ommatidium is a long, thin structure, with the lens on the outer surface of the eye, tapering to a nerve at the eye's base. When the ommatidium receives light, it is filtered through the lens, then a crystalline cone structure, pigment cells and visual cells. Every ommatidium has its own nerve fiber connecting to the optic nerve, which relays information to the fly's brain.

Flies Can't Focus

A human's eye is attached to muscles that allow it to move, expanding the field of vision and making it possible for the eye to gather more information about its surroundings. Instead of moving their eyes, flies receive information from several different points simultaneously. A fly's eyes are immobile, but because of their spherical shape and protrusion from the fly's head they give the fly an almost 360-degree view of the world. In a human eye, the pupil controls how much light comes into it, which is focused by the lens onto the retina. The retina then relays information to the brain via the optic nerve. Because fly eyes have no pupils they cannot control how much light enters the eye. With no control over how much light passes through the lens, the fly cannot focus the image it sees. Flies are also short-sighted -- a visible range of a few yards is considered good for an insect.

The Mosaic Effect

The best analogy to describe a fly's vision is to compare it to a mosaic -- thousands of tiny images convalesce, and together represent one visual image. Each one of these pictures represents information from the fly's individual ommatidium. The effect is much like how we see stippling or newspaper print -- up close the image is a lot of tiny dots, but take a step back and it's a complete image. The more ommatidia a compound eye contains, the clearer the image it creates.

Motion Detection

There's a reason why flies are especially jumpy creatures that take off at the slightest flinch. A fly's vision is nowhere near as clear or effective as a human's, but it's especially good at picking up form and movement. As an object moves across the fly's field of view the ommatidia fire and stop firing. This is called a flicker effect. It's similar to how a scrolling marquis works -- with lights turning on and off to give the illusion of motion. Because a fly can easily see motion and form, but not necessarily what the large moving object is, they are quick to flee, even if the moving object is harmless.

Interpreting Light Waves

Flies have limited color vision. Each color has its own wave frequency, but flies have only two kinds of color receptor cells. This means they have trouble distinguishing between colors, for instance discerning between yellow and white. Insects cannot see the color red, which is the lowest color frequency humans can see. However, houseflies have the ability to see polarized light, but humans cannot differentiate between polarized and unpolarized light. Polarized light is light in which the waves travel only in one plane.

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What Do Flies See Out of Their Compound Eye?

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Flies, such as the common housefly (Musca domestica) look at the world in quite a different way than humans do. The structure and function of a fly's eye are completely different from ours, and so they see shapes, motion and color differently. Flies are also able to see light in a way humans ...

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Welcome to ITIS, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System! Here you will find authoritative taxonomic information on plants, animals, fungi, and microbes of North America and the world. We are a partnership of U.S., Canadian, and Mexican agencies ( ITIS-North America); other organizations; and taxonomic specialists. ITIS is also a partner of Species 2000 and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The ITIS and Species 2000 Catalogue of Life (CoL) partnership is proud to provide the taxonomic backbone to the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL).

New & Edited Scientific Names this load: 2,584

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Welcome to ITIS, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System! Here you will find authoritative taxonomic information on plants, animals, fungi, and microbes of North America and the world. We are a partnership of U.S., Canadian, and Mexican agencies ( ITIS-North America); other organizations; and taxonomic specialists.

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GBIF hosted portals offer simple, customizable websites that support biodiversity data use and engagement at national, institutional, regional and thematic scales. This service, which Participant nodes and their partners can apply to anytime, lowers the technical demands for delivering relevant biodiversity data to communities around the world.

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Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Free and Open Access to Biodiversity Data.

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Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names

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Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names

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The University of Toronto is a globally top-ranked public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

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You don't even have to eat fast food to see behavior changes. It merely has to cross your mind.

We think we're in charge of our choices. Our moods. Our long-term goals.

Apparently not.

Marketers work hard to shape consumer behavior. They use neuroscience findings to figure out how to attract our attention. They use psychological research to manipulate our needs. Of course we rationalize, "I'm the exception. I know my own mind. Just thinking about fast food can't affect me."

Chances are, it does.

A three-part study showed the mere act of thinking about fast food makes people more impatient, more eager to use time-saving products, and less likely to save.

Wonder why we all feel hurried? In the first experiment of the three-part study, half of the participants were shown subliminal images of six fast-food chains (McDonald's, KFC, Subway, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Wendy's). The images were seen only twice, for just 12 milliseconds - much faster than the conscious mind can recognize. Participants who were exposed to these subliminal images rushed through tasks even though they were under no time pressure.

Wonder why eco-friendly, well-made products aren't top sellers? In the next experiment, participants were asked to recall a recent fast-food meal before rating products. When they did so, they were more likely to choose time-saving as the best rationale for making a purchase over other factors, such as environmental friendliness, aesthetics, or quality.

Wonder what happened to saving money? In the final experiment, participants who briefly looked at fast-food logos were much more likely, when considering compound interest, to choose a small payout immediately rather than wait for a larger payout later.

Children are even more at risk from this "fast-food thinking." Because their brains are still developing through the teen years, young people are much more vulnerable to techniques used by marketers. Child-development experts see all kinds of detrimental effects, including what psychologist Allen D. Kanner calls the "narcissistic wounding" of children.

The problem is more, much more, than fast food. It has to do with a daily bombardment by messages telling us we should have it all and have it quickly - even though neither leads to greater happiness. As Robert V. Levine noted in A Geography of Time, people actually feel more impatient when they have access to time-saving devices.

There are benefits to waiting. Things like patience and a rush of pleasure when what you've been anticipating is finally ready. Picking apples together, cutting them, and baking them into a pie takes time. The smell of the crust breaking under your fork and the shared exclamation as you take the first bites together: bliss.

This experience can't compare to a McDonald's apple-pie dessert warmed in its cardboard sleeve.

What we eat and how we eat may no longer satisfy one of our deepest hungers: the desire for connection to people, place, and culture. We see the results of that separation in our health and environment.

Contrast these slogans:

"Have it Your Way" (Burger King)

"You deserve a break today" (McDonald's)

"Your Way, Right Away" (Burger King)

"What you want is what you get" (McDonald's)

"You can eat great, even late" (Wendy's)

with this thought:
"As you eat, know that you are feeding more than just a body. You are feeding the soul's longing for life, its timeless desire to learn the lessons of earthly existence - love and hate, pleasure and pain, fear and faith, illusion and truth - through the vehicle of food. Ultimately, the most important aspect of nutrition is not what to eat but how our relationship to food can teach us who we are and how we can sustain ourselves at the deepest level of being." ~ Marc David

Living in a fast-food society changes more than our eating habits. As that recent study indicated, we unconsciously hurry other aspects of our lives as well. When we find ourselves "getting through" anything to get on to the next thing, we're ignoring the here and now. We're ignoring our lives as they are in this moment.

Let's think instead of fast food as a metaphor, a symbol showing us that there's another way to experience what's right in front of us.

Originally published in Culinate

Soon after my second baby was born, I was informed that I'd be receiving a week of meals delivered by my friends. The next seven nights our doorbell rang and there stood someone dear to me holding warm dishes filled with delights.

A break from planning and making dinner was a blessed relief. It also exposed my family to a wider array of foods. More importantly, each night we sat down to eat a relaxed dinner lovingly made for us.

We were given so much food that we tucked lots of it in the freezer, spreading the bounty of kindness into the following weeks. One friend came laden with two different kinds of lasagna, one with garlicky white sauce and spinach, another layered with black beans and lots of veggies. Years later I still make both of her recipes.

A week of meals for families with new babies became a tradition in my circle of friends and my Le Leche League chapter. Here's what worked for us.

1. Someone particularly close to the new mom and her family usually broached the idea to their mutual friends. We never designated a person in charge of planning. But your group of friends, or church, or neighborhood may decide that putting one person in charge of noting who will make a meal which night makes it easier.

2. We contacted the new mom with some basic questions such as best days and times to drop off food, food preferences, and if she wanted food brought ready to eat at dinner time or in advance to heat up later that day. Some moms preferred to have meal deliveries every other day.

3. Then we verified the plans with all potential participants. It worked best to accommodate a variety of needs among people contributing meals. Some preferred to drop off bags of Mid-Eastern salads or trays of sushi they picked up on the way home from work. Some didn't have time to deliver a meal during the week but happily provided brunch on the weekend. It helped to jot down what people were planning to make so the family didn't end up with three enchilada entrees on three consecutive nights.

4. We sent out a full schedule to everyone participating. It functioned as a reminder, listed who was bringing what, and offered suggestions such as labeling pans and including recipes. A shared Google doc can uncomplicate things. Or use one of these online meal scheduling sites to make this easier:
Meal Baby Take Them a Meal Meal Train Care Calendar Lotsa Helping Hands Caring Meals
Of course, a new baby isn't the only reason to provide a series of meals. It's a great way to welcome someone home when they return from service project or military assignment. It's a godsend when people are dealing with illness or injury. And it's remarkably helpful during the time a family is undergoing a major home renovation. Mix it up. Rather than arranging a week of steady meals, you might offer a meal every Wednesday or set up a regular potluck date to eat together.

There may be no more basic gesture of kindness than feeding people. Food sharing is a tradition found in every culture, stretching back to our earliest history. It's a stomach-filling, community-building kindness like no other. It can also swing back around remarkably. By the time my fourth child was born I was gifted with a full three weeks of meals, nearly all made by people I'd once cooked for. It was an embarrassment of riches but oh how those delicious foods warmed our hearts.

Other ways to build community:
Bring Kids Back to the Commons Engage the Window Box Effect It Really Does Take a Village We Don't Need No Age Segregation Welcome Kids Into the Workplace More Than Once a Year Odd Second Saturday Suppers Better Together: Restoring the American Community The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods All That We Share This is a repost from our farm site.

"You EAT them?" a little boy new to the neighborhood asks. He leans forward for the answer, his face ready to constrict in doubt.

Children already well acquainted with our family's springtime ritual stop picking.

"Yeah!" they eagerly assure him, "They're really good."

They aren't referring to a new vegetable in our garden. They're talking about dandelions.

Herbalists tell us exactly what we need grows nearby. Those plants we call "weeds" may in fact remedy what ails us. They are so common that their properties are easily overlooked in a culture searching for packaged wellness. Plantain, mullein, comfrey,mint, mugwort,St. John's wort, chicory and purslane spring up wild in my untreated lawn and garden. Weeds, but also powerful healers.

Today we're picking dandelions in full flower. It isn't about finding a remedy. For me the harvest is has to do with celebrating spring and affirming the beauty around us. For my children and our neighbors it's about fun. I wait until the blooms are at their peak. Then I call friends and neighbors to announce, "Today is the day!"

Children spread out across the yard holding little baskets. A girl squats in front of each plant, pausing a long moment before she reaches out to pluck a flower from its stem. The oldest boy in the group walks by many dandelion plants to pick only those growing in clusters. And the newest little boy falls silent, as the rest of the children do, taking delight in the seriousness of the harvest.

European settlers brought the dandelion plant to this continent for food and medicinal purposes. The perennial spread easily across most states. It's a testament to the power of herbicide marketers that such a useful plant became so thoroughly despised. Standing under today's blue sky, I look at exuberant yellow rosettes growing in bright green grass and feel sheer aesthetic pleasure.

After the children tire of picking we sit together on the porch and snip off the dandelion stems right up to the flower. We mothers look over their busy heads-blonde, brown, black-and smile as we watch them stay at this task with the kind of close attention children give to real work. One girl remarks that the flowers look like the sun. Another child says her grandmother told her that in the Old Country they call the plant by the same name as milk because of its white sap. The newest boy chooses to line the stems neatly along the wide porch planking, arranging and rearranging them by length.

Every aspect of a ritual holds significance so I pay attention to the warm breeze, the comfortable pulse of friendship, and flowers so soft against my fingers they remind me of a newborn's hair.

When we're done the flowers are rinsed in a colander, then it's time to cook them. I'm not a fan of frying. There are better ways to preserve the flavor and nutrients in food. Consequently I'm not very skilled. But this is easy. The children, their mothers and I drop the flowers in a thin batter, scoop them out with slotted spoons and fry them a dozen at a time in shallow pans.

After the blossoms cool slightly on paper towels they're put on two platters. One is tossed with powdered sugar and cinnamon, the other sprinkled with salt and pepper. Handfuls are eaten in the kitchen while we cook. Then we carry the platters outside. Children run off to play in grass polka dotted with bright yellow flowers. We adults sit on the porch laughing and talking.

It's suggested that we should be eating healthfully prepared dandelion greens and roots rather than indulging in delectable fried blossoms. That sentence fades into a quiet moment as a breeze stirs new leaves on the trees and lifts our children's hair. I feel enlivened. Everywhere, around me and inside me, it is spring.

Flower Power Recipe

Gather dandelion flowers from areas free of chemical treatments or fertilizer. Pick in a sunny part of the day so the flowers are fully open, then prepare right away so flowers don't close.

Cut away stem, as this is bitter, leaving only the green part holding the flower together.

Douse briefly in salt water (to flush out any lurking bugs). Dry flowers on dish towels while you prepare batter.

Ingredients

3 to 4 cups dandelion flowers, prepared as above

1 cup milk (dairy, soy, almond, coconut, any variety)

1 egg (or equivalent egg replacer product)

1 cup flour (slightly smaller amount of any whole grain alternative)

½ teaspoon salt

oil (frying is best with healthful oils which don't break down at high temperatures, try safflower oil, coconut oil or olive oil)

Method

1. Combine milk, egg, flour and salt in wide bowl. Mix well. Heat an inch or two of oil in skillet (350-375 degrees).

2. Drop a dozen or so blossoms into the batter, stir gently to coat. Lift out with slotted spoon or fork. It's best to hold the bowl over the skillet as you drop each blossom into the hot oil.

3. Turn flowers over to brown on both sides. Remove with slotted spatula to drain briefly on paper towels. Continue to fry remaining flowers using same steps. Toss cooked dandelions with sugar and cinnamon. Or salt and your choice of savory flavoring such as garlic, pepper or chili powder.

4. Making flower fritters is a speedier method than frying individual flowers. Simply drop flowers and batter into the oil by the spoonful, then turn like a pancake. Serve with jam, maple syrup or honey. Or try savory toppings like mustard, ketchup or barbeque sauce. These fritters are endlessly adaptable. Try adding sunflower or sesame seeds to the batter and serve with either the sweet or savory toppings.
What You May Not Know About Dandelions
The common dandelion, Taraxacum officinal, has been used in traditional medical systems around the world to boost nutrition as well as treat conditions of the liver, kidney and spleen; slow abnormal growths; improve digestion and more. Recently science has taken a closer look at this often scorned plant. No surprise, traditional wisdom holds up under scrutiny.

~Dandelion root stimulates the growth of 14 strains of bifidobacteria. 1 This is good news, because bifidobacteria aid in digestion. Their presence in the gut is correlated with a lower incidence of allergies. 2

~Dandelions appear to fight cancer. Researchers testing for biologically active components to combat cancer proliferation and invasion note that dandelion extracts have value as "novel anti-cancer agent[s]." Their studies show dandelion leaf extract decreases growth of certain breast cancer cells and blocks invasion of prostate cancer. The root extract blocks invasion of other specific breast cancer cells 3 and also shows promise inhibiting skin cancer. 4

~Dandelions work as an anti-inflammatory and pain relieving agent. 5

~Dandelion extract lowers cholesterol. This, plus its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant qualities leads some researchers to believe that the plant may reduce the risk of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). 6

~The plant's leaves are an effective diuretic. 7

~Dandelion shows promise in diabetic treatment. It slows the glycemic response to carbohydrates, thereby helping to control blood sugar. 8

~Dandelion extract increases the action of estrogen and progesterone receptors. It may prove to be a useful treatment for reproductive hormone-related problems including PMS. 9

~ Leaves, roots and flowers ofthe humble dandelion are fully edible. USDA National Nutrient Database analysis proves that a festive array of nutrition awaits any lawn harvester. One cup of chopped fresh dandelion greens are extremely rich in vitamins K, A and C as well as good source of vitamin E,thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B6, calcium, iron, ,magnesium, manganese, fiber andomega-3 fatty acids. 10

The flavonoids found in dandelions are valuable antioxidants and free radical scavengers. 11

1 I. Trojanova, V. Rada, L. Kokoska, E. Vikova, "The Bifidogenic Effect of Taraxacum Officinale Root," Fitoterapia vol 75 issue 7/8 (December 2004), 760-763. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15567259 (accessed 8-29-09)

2 Bengt Bjorksten, Epp Sepp, Kaja Julge, Tiia Voor, Marika Mikelsaar, "Allergy Development and the Intestinal Microflora During the First Year of Life," The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology vol 108 issue 4 (October 2001), 516-520. http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(01)96140-8/abstract (accessed 8-29-09)

3 S.C.Sigstedt, C.J. Hooten, M.C. Callewaert, A.R. Jenkins, A.E. Romera, M.J. Pullin, A. Korneinko, T.K. Lowrey, S.V. Slambrouck, W.F. Steelant, "Evaluation of Aqueous Extracts of Taraxacum Officinale on Growth and Invasion of Breast and Prostate Cancer Cells," International Journal of Oncologyvol 32, num 5 (May 2008), 1085-1090. http://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/article.jsp?article_id=ijo_32_5_1085 (accessed 8-30-09).

9 Zhi Xu, Ken-Ichi Honda, Koji Ozaki, Takuya Misugi, Toshiyuki Sumi, Osamu Ishiko, "Dandelioin T-1 Extract Up-regulates Reproductive Hormone Receptor Expression in Mice," International Journal of Molecular Medicine volume 20, 3 (2007) 287-292. http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=19007317 (accessed 8-27-09).

10 USDA Agricultural Research Service, USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 21, (2008) NDB # 11207 http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl (accessed 9-1-09).
This post is reprinted from an article that first appeared in Natural Life Magazine.

It's a family joke that I am unable to follow a recipe. Not a funny joke but completely true.

I can't help myself. I tweak the kind of flours and fats, ramp up the spices, toss in a few extra ingredients, adjust the methods used. Yes this approach alters a recipe beyond recognition. But my family will admit the end result usually tastes good even if they like to ask, "Okay, now tell us what's really in here." That's because I've been known to put chard in popsicles, beets in dip, and beans in brownies.

Sometimes I try, really try, to follow a recipe to the letter. There's the real joke. Because when I do the results are awful. The casserole is tasteless, the biscuits are scratchy, and the cookies slump into pools of goo. Clearly improvising is the best route for me.

What I really like about improvisation is facing the challenge our great grandparents faced as they ran frugal households. The same challenge accepted by cooks every day all over the world. Very simply, to use everything well while wasting nothing. This is more about necessity than anything else. It means the cook knows what is in the garden, pantry, and refrigerator at all times. She knows a hard frost is coming, so the rutabagas can stay in the ground but the green tomatoes must be picked. She remembers that the potatoes in the pantry are starting to soften and must be used right away. She knows the lentils made two days ago have to be served or frozen. She finds ways to use carrots going limp and cheese getting dry. She purees leftover soup to make sauce for an entrée and turns yesterday's roast chicken into today's enchiladas. In our current economy it's not a game for many of us. This real life pursuit is more interesting and more rewarding than any competition faced on Top Chef.

I find the creative aspect downright addictive. So tonight, when our dinner guests called to say they were running late I realized I had time to make another dip to serve alongside our homemade salsa. I turned up the music and started pulling out potential leftovers. A few ounces of cream cheese abandoned when the asymmetrical but tasty homemade bagels ran out, a few spoonfuls of leftover canned chile in adobo sauce, a large cooked sweet potato. Probably doesn't sound like a dip. Except to this recipe heretic.

I warm the cream cheese a little, then mash half the sweet potato with a fork and mix in a bit of the chile in adobo sauce. The texture is awful and the taste is nothing like dip. So I toss it in the blender. Nope, it's too thick to blend. I add a dollop of sour cream. Blend. Oh, nice orange-y color. Taste? Needs something. I toss in a pinch of dry chipotle powder and a dash of salt. Blend. Taste. Needs more heat so I add a bit more chile in adobo sauce. Blend. Taste. It needs some freshness. I have green tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers but I don't think I'm aiming for a raw element. Instead I pour off a tiny bit of the liquid from the salsa we canned. Blend. Oooh, it's good. Still needs something to round off the strong edge. Hmmm. Maybe this sort of spicy will benefit from a little sweetness. I think about putting in applesauce but first try drop of our honey. I give the blender another whirl. Perfect!

The doorbell rings, the dogs bark, and our friends come in bringing lively conversation. My improvised dip is there on the table next to the salsa, waiting to be scooped up with blue chips. The colors are an aesthetic delight and the use of leftover ingredients satisfies my frugal heart. But what's really a pleasure is watching the whole bowl emptied by friends who rave over the taste even after I confess that it's made out of sweet potato. In a heavenly kitchen somewhere I hope those great grandmothers nod their approval.

*
Subversive Cook is now the title of my next book. I'm slow at work on it. See how you can contribute at subversivecook.com or get in touch with me using this site's contact form.

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We think we're in charge of our choices. Our moods. Our long-term goals. Apparently not. Marketers work hard to shape consumer behavior. They use neuroscience findings to figure out how to attract our attention. They use psychological research to manipulate our needs. Of course we rationalize, "I'm the exception.

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Explore Oceana’s Marine Life Encyclopedia to learn fun facts about your favorite marine animals - from sharks and sea turtles to ecosystems and corals.

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Ocean Topics : Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

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Ocean Topics : Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

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woods hole oceanographic institution (whoi)

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The Duke Lemur Center is the world's largest and most diverse collection of lemurs - Earth's most threatened group of mammals - outside of Madagascar. The Duke Lemur Center advances science, scholarship, and biological conservation through interdisciplinary research, community-based conservation, and public outreach.

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99 strange collective animal names | MNN - Mother Nature Network

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99 strange collective animal names | MNN - Mother Nature Network

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From social butterflies to solitary scavengers, virtually all animals gather into groups at some point in their lives. Safety in numbers is one reason for this, since a pack of prey is less vulnerable to attack by predators, but many animals also rely on collective wisdom to help them make better decisions. Some even blur the line between individual and group, while others limit their social time to mating season.

Whatever draws them together, something odd happens when creatures form crowds: They suddenly have bizarre, often silly names. These group nouns are rarely used, even by scientists, but they nonetheless represent our own species' collective creativity for linguistics - not to mention our deep-rooted affinity for nature.

Taking the time to name a "richness of martens" or a "murmuration of starlings," for example, suggests a basic lack of contempt for the wildlife in question. Even our more derogatory labels, like an "obstinacy of buffalo" or an "unkindness of ravens," reveal a certain respect for the nonhuman neighbors that share our environment.

Without further ado, here are 99 of the strangest collective names for animals:

Mammals and marsupials

A conspiracy of ring-tailed lemurs. (Photo: Bas Czerwinski/AFP/Getty Images)

Birds

An ostentation of Indian peacocks. (Photo: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images)

Reptiles and amphibians

A maelstrom of crocodile salamanders. (Photo: Tanes Ngamsom/Shutterstock)

Fish

A shiver of hammerhead sharks. (Photo: Janos Rautonen/Shutterstock)

Invertebrates

A fluther of golden jellyfish. (Photo: Ethan Daniels/Shutterstock)

99 strange collective animal names

Whether it's a shrewdness of apes, a pandemonium of parrots or a zeal of zebras, lots of animals have bizarre names when they gather in groups.

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From social butterflies to solitary scavengers, virtually all animals gather into groups at some point in their lives. Safety in numbers is one reason for this, since a pack of prey is less vulnerable to attack by predators, but many animals also rely on collective wisdom to help them make better decisions.

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Insect Dichotomous Key (for separating Arachnida from Insecta)

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Insect Dichotomous Key (for separating Arachnida from Insecta)

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Our Two Point Insect Dichotomous Key can assist in identifying between an insect and a spider. Beginning with Question #1, determine which statement ("a" or "b") is true for the insect in question. From there, simply follow the directions at the end of the true statement until you arrive at your identification destination. From there, visit our list pages to specifically identify your insect.

a. Subject has eight legs - YES, go to the Arachnid Key
b. Subject has six legs - YES, go to Question #2

a. Subject has wings - YES, go to the Winged Insect Key
b. Subject does not have wings - YES, go to the Wingless Insect Key

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Walkthrough Insect Dichotomous Key for distinguishing between insects and spiders.

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Our Two Point Insect Dichotomous Key can assist in identifying between an insect and a spider. Beginning with Question #1, determine which statement ("a" or "b") is true for the insect in question. From there, simply follow the directions at the end of the true statement until you arrive at your identification destination.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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SEA Semester Study Abroad Programs | SEA Semester

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SEA Semester Study Abroad Programs | SEA Semester

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Marine Biodiversity & Conservation
March 22 - June 12, 2021
Learn more "

About SEA

Sea Education Association is an internationally recognized leader in field-based environmental education at sea.

Shop the SEA Store

Purchase SEA Semester t-shirts, tanks, sweatshirts and more.

Turn Over the Watch

Do you know a college, high school, or gap year student who would love an environmental studies focused summer or semester at sea?

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SEA Semester Study Abroad Programs | SEA Semester

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Marine Biodiversity & Conservation March 22 - June 12, 2021 Learn more " Sea Education Association is an internationally recognized leader in field-based environmental education at sea. Purchase SEA Semester t-shirts, tanks, sweatshirts and more. Do you know a college, high school, or gap year student who would love an environmental studies focused summer or semester at sea?

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International Union for Conservation of Nature - IUCN

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International Union for Conservation of Nature - IUCN

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Shortly after the Second World War, IUCN's founders came together under the shared belief that no single government or organisation can address the challenges facing our planet alone. Each of the seven decades since has reinforced the truth of that belief, and proved the value of a global Union dedicated to solving the issues facing humanity and its relationship with nature, on which humanity depends.

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Conservation & Science - Monterey Bay Aquarium

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Conservation & Science - Monterey Bay Aquarium

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Conservation & Science - Monterey Bay Aquarium

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The Aquarium's Conservation and Science programs are tackling some of the most critical issues affecting ocean health. Learn about our programs and research.

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The Animal Diversity Web is an online database and encyclopedia of animal natural history, built through contributions from students, photographers, and many others.

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What's in a Name? You may not know it, but all living species have only one scientific name. That's right, only one name. You might hear a plant or animal called many things depending on where a person lives and the language they speak, but only one name is used by scientists.

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Explore Earth's species and the relationships between them easily.

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Animal Research | American Physiological Society

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Animal Research | American Physiological Society

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Disease causes suffering for humans and other animals. Performing animal studies when it is necessary to do so is a compassionate response to that suffering. Furthermore, it would be unethical to give human patients-or our pets-drugs or other treatments that have not been tested for safety and effectiveness.

The American Physiological Society supports the necessary and humane use of animals in biomedical research. This research should be conducted humanely according to the highest legal and ethical standards.

When scientists confront a research problem, they begin by answering as many questions as they can by analyzing genes; studying cells, tissues and organs; or building computer models based upon what we already know. These approaches point to likely solutions. At the same time, because the body is complex, these systems cannot predict how disease or potential treatment will affect various parts of the body. To understand these effects, scientists must study comparable processes in animals.

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Disease causes suffering for humans and other animals. Performing animal studies when it is necessary to do so is a compassionate response to that suffering. Furthermore, it would be unethical to give human patients-or our pets-drugs or other treatments that have not been tested for safety and effectiveness.

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Exploring Our Fluid Earth, a product of the Curriculum Research & Development Group (CRDG), College of Education. University of Hawaii, 2011. This document may be freely reproduced and distributed for non-profit educational purposes.

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Exploring Our Fluid Earth, a product of the Curriculum Research & Development Group (CRDG), College of Education. University of Hawaii, 2011. This document may be freely reproduced and distributed for non-profit educational purposes.

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Course Information

Description: Characteristics, life cycles, adaptations, and evolution of invertebrate animals. Prerequisites: Bio 181 and Bio 182 with a C or better.

Current Sections: BIO 385 in not currently offered
BIO 385 will most likely be offered Spring 2021

Texts: J.A. Pechenik 2015. Biology of the Invertebrates, 7th ed. McGraw-Hill.
U.M. Savalli 2019. Invertebrate Zoology A Laboratory Manual, LAD Custom Publishing (sold at ASU West bookstore).

The Instructor: Udo M. Savalli

Week of:

Topic:

Chapter:

Jan 14-18 —

No Class Jan 16
Animal body plans, repro & development

2, 24

Feb 4-8 —

Exam 1, Feb 4
Sponges & placozoans

4

Mar 4-8 —

Spring Break

Mar 11-15 —

Exam 2, Mar 11
Annelids & Ribbon Worms

11, 13

Apr 8-12 —

Arthropods, continued
Exam 3, Apr 8

14

May 1 —
Final Exam: 12:10 - 2:00

Date:

Topic:

Lab Manual Exercise

Mar 1

- Lab Practical Exam 1

8

- Spring Break (optional field trip)

26

- Lab Practical Exam 2

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Description: Characteristics, life cycles, adaptations, and evolution of invertebrate animals. Prerequisites: Bio 181 and Bio 182 with a C or better. Current Sections: BIO 385 in not currently offered BIO 385 will most likely be offered Spring 2021 Texts: J.A. Pechenik 2015. Biology of the Invertebrates, 7th ed. McGraw-Hill.U.M. Savalli 2019.

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Zoo Careers InfoBook | SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment

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Zoo Careers InfoBook | SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment

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Ever wondered what it's like to work at SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, or Discovery Cove? Learn more about our veterinarian and zoological opportunities.

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Animal InfoBooks I SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment

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Animal InfoBooks I SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment

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WAZA : World Association of Zoos and Aquariums

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WAZA : World Association of Zoos and Aquariums

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WAZA : World Association of Zoos and Aquariums

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The world zoo and aquarium community welcomes over 700 million visitors annually. WAZA members are leading zoos, aquariums,

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Humans navigate with maps and instruments. How animals sense the earth's magnetic field in order to navigate through the air, land and sea is a question that has fascinated nature lovers and scie

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Discover profiles, photos, and guides to help you expand your knowledge of the flora and fauna that inhabit our big, beautiful planet.

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2016 conservation indicator which includes the following indicators: marine protected areas, terrestrial biome protection (global and national), and species protection (global and national)

Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an interdisciplinary subject drawing on natural and social sciences, and the practice of natural resource management.

The conservation ethic is based on the findings of conservation biology.

Efforts are made to preserve the natural characteristics of Hopetoun Falls, Australia, without affecting visitors' access.

The term conservation biology and its conception as a new field originated with the convening of "The First International Conference on Research in Conservation Biology" held at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, California, in 1978 led by American biologists Bruce A. Wilcox and Michael E. Soulé with a group of leading university and zoo researchers and conservationists including Kurt Benirschke, Sir Otto Frankel, Thomas Lovejoy, and Jared Diamond. The meeting was prompted due to concern over tropical deforestation, disappearing species, and eroding genetic diversity within species. The conference and proceedings that resulted sought to initiate the bridging of a gap between theory in ecology and evolutionary genetics on the one hand and conservation policy and practice on the other.

Conservation biology and the concept of biological diversity ( biodiversity) emerged together, helping crystallize the modern era of conservation science and policy. The inherent multidisciplinary basis for conservation biology has led to new subdisciplines including conservation social science, conservation behavior and conservation physiology. It stimulated further development of conservation genetics which Otto Frankel had originated first but is now often considered a subdiscipline as well.

The rapid decline of established biological systems around the world means that conservation biology is often referred to as a "Discipline with a deadline". Conservation biology is tied closely to ecology in researching the population ecology ( dispersal, migration, demographics, effective population size, inbreeding depression, and minimum population viability) of rare or endangered species. Conservation biology is concerned with phenomena that affect the maintenance, loss, and restoration of biodiversity and the science of sustaining evolutionary processes that engender genetic, population, species, and ecosystem diversity. The concern stems from estimates suggesting that up to 50% of all species on the planet will disappear within the next 50 years, which will increase poverty and starvation, and will reset the course of evolution on this planet. Researchers acknowledge that projections are difficult, given the unknown potential impacts of many variables, including species introduction to new biogeographical settings and a non-analog climate.

Conservation biologists research and educate on the trends and process of biodiversity loss, species extinctions, and the negative effect these are having on our capabilities to sustain the well-being of human society. Conservation biologists work in the field and office, in government, universities, non-profit organizations and industry. The topics of their research are diverse, because this is an interdisciplinary network with professional alliances in the biological as well as social sciences. Those dedicated to the cause and profession advocate for a global response to the current biodiversity crisis based on morals, ethics, and scientific reason. Organizations and citizens are responding to the biodiversity crisis through conservation action plans that direct research, monitoring, and education programs that engage concerns at local through global scales. There is increasing recognition that conservation is not just about what is achieved but how it is done. A "conservation acrostic" has been created to emphasize that point where C = co-produced, O = open, N = nimble, S = solutions-oriented, E = empowering, R = relational, V = values-based, A = actionable, T = transdisciplinary, I = inclusive, O = optimistic, and N = nurturing.

The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others.

Conscious efforts to conserve and protect global biodiversity are a recent phenomenon. Natural resource conservation, however, has a history that extends prior to the age of conservation. Resource ethics grew out of necessity through direct relations with nature. Regulation or communal restraint became necessary to prevent selfish motives from taking more than could be locally sustained, therefore compromising the long-term supply for the rest of the community. This social dilemma with respect to natural resource management is often called the " Tragedy of the Commons".

From this principle, conservation biologists can trace communal resource based ethics throughout cultures as a solution to communal resource conflict. For example, the Alaskan Tlingit peoples and the Haida of the Pacific Northwest had resource boundaries, rules, and restrictions among clans with respect to the fishing of sockeye salmon. These rules were guided by clan elders who knew lifelong details of each river and stream they managed. There are numerous examples in history where cultures have followed rules, rituals, and organized practice with respect to communal natural resource management.

The Mauryan emperor Ashoka around 250 BC issued edicts restricting the slaughter of animals and certain kinds of birds, as well as opened veterinary clinics.

Conservation ethics are also found in early religious and philosophical writings. There are examples in the Tao, Shinto, Hindu, Islamic and Buddhist traditions. In Greek philosophy, Plato lamented about pasture land degradation: "What is left now is, so to say, the skeleton of a body wasted by disease; the rich, soft soil has been carried off and only the bare framework of the district left." In the bible, through Moses, God commanded to let the land rest from cultivation every seventh year. Before the 18th century, however, much of European culture considered it a pagan view to admire nature. Wilderness was denigrated while agricultural development was praised. However, as early as AD 680 a wildlife sanctuary was founded on the Farne Islands by St Cuthbert in response to his religious beliefs.

White gyrfalcons drawn by John James Audubon

More conservation research is needed for understanding ecology and behaviour of the dhole in central China.

Natural history was a major preoccupation in the 18th century, with grand expeditions and the opening of popular public displays in Europe and North America. By 1900 there were 150 natural history museums in Germany, 250 in Great Britain, 250 in the United States, and 300 in France. Preservationist or conservationist sentiments are a development of the late 18th to early 20th centuries.

Before Charles Darwin set sail on HMS Beagle, most people in the world, including Darwin, believed in special creation and that all species were unchanged. George-Louis Leclerc was one of the first naturalist that questioned this belief. He proposed in his 44 volume natural history book that species evolve due to environmental influences. Erasmus Darwin was also a naturalist who also suggested that species evolved. Erasmus Darwin noted that some species have vestigial structures which are anatomical structures that have no apparent function in the species currently but would have been useful for the species' ancestors. The thinking of these early 18th century naturalists helped to change the mindset and thinking of the early 19th century naturalists.

By the early 19th century biogeography was ignited through the efforts of Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. The 19th-century fascination with natural history engendered a fervor to be the first to collect rare specimens with the goal of doing so before they became extinct by other such collectors. Although the work of many 18th and 19th century naturalists were to inspire nature enthusiasts and conservation organizations, their writings, by modern standards, showed insensitivity towards conservation as they would kill hundreds of specimens for their collections.

The modern roots of conservation biology can be found in the late 18th-century Enlightenment period particularly in England and Scotland. Thinkers including Lord Monboddo described the importance of "preserving nature"; much of this early emphasis had its origins in Christian theology.

Scientific conservation principles were first practically applied to the forests of British India. The conservation ethic that began to evolve included three core principles: that human activity damaged the environment, that there was a civic duty to maintain the environment for future generations, and that scientific, empirically based methods should be applied to ensure this duty was carried out. Sir James Ranald Martin was prominent in promoting this ideology, publishing many medico-topographical reports that demonstrated the scale of damage wrought through large-scale deforestation and desiccation, and lobbying extensively for the institutionalization of forest conservation activities in British India through the establishment of Forest Departments.

The Madras Board of Revenue started local conservation efforts in 1842, headed by Alexander Gibson, a professional botanist who systematically adopted a forest conservation program based on scientific principles. This was the first case of state conservation management of forests in the world. Governor-General Lord Dalhousie introduced the first permanent and large-scale forest conservation program in the world in 1855, a model that soon spread to other colonies, as well the United States, where Yellowstone National Park was opened in 1872 as the world's first national park.

The term conservation came into widespread use in the late 19th century and referred to the management, mainly for economic reasons, of such natural resources as timber, fish, game, topsoil, pastureland, and minerals. In addition it referred to the preservation of forests ( forestry), wildlife ( wildlife refuge), parkland, wilderness, and watersheds. This period also saw the passage of the first conservation legislation and the establishment of the first nature conservation societies. The Sea Birds Preservation Act of 1869 was passed in Britain as the first nature protection law in the world after extensive lobbying from the Association for the Protection of Seabirds and the respected ornithologist Alfred Newton. Newton was also instrumental in the passage of the first Game laws from 1872, which protected animals during their breeding season so as to prevent the stock from being brought close to extinction.

One of the first conservation societies was the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, founded in 1889 in Manchester as a protest group campaigning against the use of great crested grebe and kittiwake skins and feathers in fur clothing. Originally known as "the Plumage League", the group gained popularity and eventually amalgamated with the Fur and Feather League in Croydon, and formed the RSPB. The National Trust formed in 1895 with the manifesto to "...promote the permanent preservation, for the benefit of the nation, of lands, ... to preserve (so far practicable) their natural aspect." In May 1912, a month after the Titanic sank, banker and expert naturalist Charles Rothschild held a meeting at the Natural History Museum in London to discuss his idea for a new organisation to save the best places for wildlife in the British Isles. This meeting led to the formation of the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, which later became the Wildlife Trusts.

Some biodiversity loss is more insidious than others due to systemic neglect. For example, sport killing and wanton waste of tons of native fishes from unregulated 21st century bowfishing in the United States.[48] New conservation movements are needed to deter irreparable biodiversity loss to fragile freshwater ecosystems.

In the United States, the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 gave the President power to set aside forest reserves from the land in the public domain. John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892, and the New York Zoological Society was set up in 1895. A series of national forests and preserves were established by Theodore Roosevelt from 1901 to 1909. The 1916 National Parks Act, included a 'use without impairment' clause, sought by John Muir, which eventually resulted in the removal of a proposal to build a dam in Dinosaur National Monument in 1959.

Roosevelt and Muir on Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park

In the 20th century, Canadian civil servants, including Charles Gordon Hewitt and James Harkin, spearheaded the movement toward wildlife conservation.

In the 21st century professional conservation officers have begun to collaborate with indigenous communities for protecting wildlife in Canada. Some conservation efforts are yet to fully take hold due to ecological neglect. For example in the USA, 21st century bowfishing of native fishes, which amounts to killing wild animals for recreation and disposing of them immediately afterwards, remains unregulated and unmanaged.

In the mid-20th century, efforts arose to target individual species for conservation, notably efforts in big cat conservation in South America led by the New York Zoological Society. In the early 20th century the New York Zoological Society was instrumental in developing concepts of establishing preserves for particular species and conducting the necessary conservation studies to determine the suitability of locations that are most appropriate as conservation priorities; the work of Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr., Carl E. Akeley, Archie Carr and his son Archie Carr III is notable in this era. Akeley for example, having led expeditions to the Virunga Mountains and observed the mountain gorilla in the wild, became convinced that the species and the area were conservation priorities. He was instrumental in persuading Albert I of Belgium to act in defense of the mountain gorilla and establish Albert National Park (since renamed Virunga National Park) in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo.

By the 1970s, led primarily by work in the United States under the Endangered Species Act along with the Species at Risk Act (SARA) of Canada, Biodiversity Action Plans developed in Australia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, hundreds of species specific protection plans ensued. Notably the United Nations acted to conserve sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of mankind. The programme was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in 1972. As of 2006, a total of 830 sites are listed: 644 cultural, 162 natural. The first country to pursue aggressive biological conservation through national legislation was the United States, which passed back to back legislation in the Endangered Species Act (1966) and National Environmental Policy Act (1970), which together injected major funding and protection measures to large-scale habitat protection and threatened species research. Other conservation developments, however, have taken hold throughout the world. India, for example, passed the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972.

In 1980, a significant development was the emergence of the urban conservation movement. A local organization was established in Birmingham, UK, a development followed in rapid succession in cities across the UK, then overseas. Although perceived as a grassroots movement, its early development was driven by academic research into urban wildlife. Initially perceived as radical, the movement's view of conservation being inextricably linked with other human activity has now become mainstream in conservation thought. Considerable research effort is now directed at urban conservation biology. The Society for Conservation Biology originated in 1985.

By 1992, most of the countries of the world had become committed to the principles of conservation of biological diversity with the Convention on Biological Diversity; subsequently many countries began programmes of Biodiversity Action Plans to identify and conserve threatened species within their borders, as well as protect associated habitats. The late 1990s saw increasing professionalism in the sector, with the maturing of organisations such as the Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management and the Society for the Environment.

Since 2000, the concept of landscape scale conservation has risen to prominence, with less emphasis being given to single-species or even single-habitat focused actions. Instead an ecosystem approach is advocated by most mainstream conservationists, although concerns have been expressed by those working to protect some high-profile species.

Ecology has clarified the workings of the biosphere; i.e., the complex interrelationships among humans, other species, and the physical environment. The burgeoning human population and associated agriculture, industry, and the ensuing pollution, have demonstrated how easily ecological relationships can be disrupted.

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

Extinction rates are measured in a variety of ways. Conservation biologists measure and apply statistical measures of fossil records, rates of habitat loss, and a multitude of other variables such as loss of biodiversity as a function of the rate of habitat loss and site occupancy to obtain such estimates. The Theory of Island Biogeography is possibly the most significant contribution toward the scientific understanding of both the process and how to measure the rate of species extinction. The current background extinction rate is estimated to be one species every few years. Actual extinction rates are estimated to be orders of magnitudes higher. While this is important, it's worth noting that there are no models in existence that account for the complexity of unpredictable factors like species movement, a non-analog climate, changing species interactions, evolutionary rates on finer time scales, and many other stochastic variables.

The measure of ongoing species loss is made more complex by the fact that most of the Earth's species have not been described or evaluated. Estimates vary greatly on how many species actually exist (estimated range: 3,600,000-111,700,000) to how many have received a species binomial (estimated range: 1.5-8 million). Less than 1% of all species that have been described beyond simply noting its existence. From these figures, the IUCN reports that 23% of vertebrates, 5% of invertebrates and 70% of plants that have been evaluated are designated as endangered or threatened. Better knowledge is being constructed by The Plant List for actual numbers of species.

Systematic conservation planning is an effective way to seek and identify efficient and effective types of reserve design to capture or sustain the highest priority biodiversity values and to work with communities in support of local ecosystems. Margules and Pressey identify six interlinked stages in the systematic planning approach:

1. Compile data on the biodiversity of the planning region

2. Identify conservation goals for the planning region

3. Review existing conservation areas

4. Select additional conservation areas

5. Implement conservation actions

6. Maintain the required values of conservation areas

Conservation biologists regularly prepare detailed conservation plans for grant proposals or to effectively coordinate their plan of action and to identify best management practices (e.g.). Systematic strategies generally employ the services of Geographic Information Systems to assist in the decision-making process. The SLOSS debate is often considered in planning.

Conservation physiology was defined by Steven J. Cooke and colleagues as:

An integrative scientific discipline applying physiological concepts, tools, and knowledge to characterizing biological diversity and its ecological implications; understanding and predicting how organisms, populations, and ecosystems respond to environmental change and stressors; and solving conservation problems across the broad range of taxa (i.e. including microbes, plants, and animals). Physiology is considered in the broadest possible terms to include functional and mechanistic responses at all scales, and conservation includes the development and refinement of strategies to rebuild populations, restore ecosystems, inform conservation policy, generate decision-support tools, and manage natural resources.

Conservation physiology is particularly relevant to practitioners in that it has the potential to generate cause-and-effect relationships and reveal the factors that contribute to population declines.

The Society for Conservation Biology is a global community of conservation professionals dedicated to advancing the science and practice of conserving biodiversity. Conservation biology as a discipline reaches beyond biology, into subjects such as philosophy, law, economics, humanities, arts, anthropology, and education. Within biology, conservation genetics and evolution are immense fields unto themselves, but these disciplines are of prime importance to the practice and profession of conservation biology.

Conservationists introduce bias when they support policies using qualitative description, such as habitat degradation, or healthy ecosystems. Conservation biologists advocate for reasoned and sensible management of natural resources and do so with a disclosed combination of science, reason, logic, and values in their conservation management plans. This sort of advocacy is similar to the medical profession advocating for healthy lifestyle options, both are beneficial to human well-being yet remain scientific in their approach.

There is a movement in conservation biology suggesting a new form of leadership is needed to mobilize conservation biology into a more effective discipline that is able to communicate the full scope of the problem to society at large. The movement proposes an adaptive leadership approach that parallels an adaptive management approach. The concept is based on a new philosophy or leadership theory steering away from historical notions of power, authority, and dominance. Adaptive conservation leadership is reflective and more equitable as it applies to any member of society who can mobilize others toward meaningful change using communication techniques that are inspiring, purposeful, and collegial. Adaptive conservation leadership and mentoring programs are being implemented by conservation biologists through organizations such as the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program.

Conservation may be classified as either in-situ conservation, which is protecting an endangered species in its natural habitat, or ex-situ conservation, which occurs outside the natural habitat. In-situ conservation involves protecting or restoring the habitat. Ex-situ conservation, on the other hand, involves protection outside of an organism's natural habitat, such as on reservations or in gene banks, in circumstances where viable populations may not be present in the natural habitat.

Also, non-interference may be used, which is termed a preservationist method. Preservationists advocate for giving areas of nature and species a protected existence that halts interference from the humans. In this regard, conservationists differ from preservationists in the social dimension, as conservation biology engages society and seeks equitable solutions for both society and ecosystems. Some preservationists emphasize the potential of biodiversity in a world without humans.

Ecological monitoring is the systematic collection of data relevant to the ecology of a species or habitat at repeating intervals with defined methods. Long-term monitoring for environmental and ecological metrics is an important part of any successful conservation initiative. Unfortunately, long-term data for many species and habitats is not available in many cases. A lack of historical data on species populations, habitats, and ecosystems means that any current or future conservation work will have to make assumptions to determine if the work is having any effect on the population or ecosystem health. Ecological monitoring can provide early warning signals of deleterious effects (from human activities or natural changes in an environment) on an ecosystem and its species. In order for signs of negative trends in ecosystem or species health to be detected, monitoring methods must be carried out at appropriate time intervals, and the metric must be able to capture the trend of the population or habitat as a whole.

Long-term monitoring can include the continued measuring of many biological, ecological, and environmental metrics including annual breeding success, population size estimates, water quality, biodiversity (which can be measured in many way, i.e. Shannon Index), and many other methods. When determining which metrics to monitor for a conservation project, it is important to understand how an ecosystem functions and what role different species and abiotic factors have within the system. It is important to have a precise reason for why ecological monitoring is implemented; within the context of conservation, this reasoning is often to track changes before, during, or after conservation measures are put in place to help a species or habitat recover from degradation and/or maintain integrity.

Another benefit of ecological monitoring is the hard evidence it provides scientists to use for advising policy makers and funding bodies about conservation efforts. Not only is ecological monitoring data important for convincing politicians, funders, and the public why a conservation program is important to implement, but also to keep them convinced that a program should be continued to be supported.

There is plenty of debate on how conservation resources can be used most efficiently; even within ecological monitoring, there is debate on which metrics that money, time and personnel should be dedicated to for the best chance of making a positive impact. One specific general discussion topic is whether monitoring should happen where there is little human impact (to understand a system that has not been degraded by humans), where there is human impact (so the effects from humans can be investigated), or where there is data deserts and little is known about the habitats' and communities' response to human perturbations.

The concept of bioindicators / indicator species can be applied to ecological monitoring as a way to investigate how pollution is affecting an ecosystem. Species like amphibians and birds are highly susceptible to pollutants in their environment due to their behaviours and physiological features that cause them to absorb pollutants at a faster rate than other species. Amphibians spend parts of their time in the water and on land, making them susceptible to changes in both environments. They also have very permeable skin that allows them to breath and intake water, which means they also take any air or water-soluble pollutants in as well. Birds often cover a wide range in habitat types annually, and also generally revisit the same nesting site each year. This makes it easier for researchers to track ecological effects at both an individual and a population level for the species.

Many conservation researchers believe that having a long-term ecological monitoring program should be a priority for conservation projects, protected areas, and regions where environmental harm mitigation is used.

Conservation biologists are interdisciplinary researchers that practice ethics in the biological and social sciences. Chan states that conservationists must advocate for biodiversity and can do so in a scientifically ethical manner by not promoting simultaneous advocacy against other competing values.

A conservationist may be inspired by the resource conservation ethic, which seeks to identify what measures will deliver "the greatest good for the greatest number of people for the longest time." In contrast, some conservation biologists argue that nature has an intrinsic value that is independent of anthropocentric usefulness or utilitarianism.: 3, 12, 16-17  Aldo Leopold was a classical thinker and writer on such conservation ethics whose philosophy, ethics and writings are still valued and revisited by modern conservation biologists.

A pie chart image showing the relative biomass representation in a rain forest through a summary of children's perceptions from drawings and artwork (left), through a scientific estimate of actual biomass (middle), and by a measure of biodiversity (right). The biomass of social insects (middle) far outweighs the number of species (right).

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has organized a global assortment of scientists and research stations across the planet to monitor the changing state of nature in an effort to tackle the extinction crisis. The IUCN provides annual updates on the status of species conservation through its Red List. The IUCN Red List serves as an international conservation tool to identify those species most in need of conservation attention and by providing a global index on the status of biodiversity. More than the dramatic rates of species loss, however, conservation scientists note that the sixth mass extinction is a biodiversity crisis requiring far more action than a priority focus on rare, endemic or endangered species. Concerns for biodiversity loss covers a broader conservation mandate that looks at ecological processes, such as migration, and a holistic examination of biodiversity at levels beyond the species, including genetic, population and ecosystem diversity. Extensive, systematic, and rapid rates of biodiversity loss threatens the sustained well-being of humanity by limiting supply of ecosystem services that are otherwise regenerated by the complex and evolving holistic network of genetic and ecosystem diversity. While the conservation status of species is employed extensively in conservation management, some scientists highlight that it is the common species that are the primary source of exploitation and habitat alteration by humanity. Moreover, common species are often undervalued despite their role as the primary source of ecosystem services.

While most in the community of conservation science "stress the importance" of sustaining biodiversity, there is debate on how to prioritize genes, species, or ecosystems, which are all components of biodiversity (e.g. Bowen, 1999). While the predominant approach to date has been to focus efforts on endangered species by conserving biodiversity hotspots, some scientists (e.g) and conservation organizations, such as the Nature Conservancy, argue that it is more cost-effective, logical, and socially relevant to invest in biodiversity coldspots. The costs of discovering, naming, and mapping out the distribution of every species, they argue, is an ill-advised conservation venture. They reason it is better to understand the significance of the ecological roles of species.

Biodiversity hotspots and coldspots are a way of recognizing that the spatial concentration of genes, species, and ecosystems is not uniformly distributed on the Earth's surface. For example, "... 44% of all species of vascular plants and 35% of all species in four vertebrate groups are confined to 25 hotspots comprising only 1.4% of the land surface of the Earth."

Those arguing in favor of setting priorities for coldspots point out that there are other measures to consider beyond biodiversity. They point out that emphasizing hotspots downplays the importance of the social and ecological connections to vast areas of the Earth's ecosystems where biomass, not biodiversity, reigns supreme. It is estimated that 36% of the Earth's surface, encompassing 38.9% of the worlds vertebrates, lacks the endemic species to qualify as biodiversity hotspot. Moreover, measures show that maximizing protections for biodiversity does not capture ecosystem services any better than targeting randomly chosen regions. Population level biodiversity (mostly in coldspots) are disappearing at a rate that is ten times that at the species level. The level of importance in addressing biomass versus endemism as a concern for conservation biology is highlighted in literature measuring the level of threat to global ecosystem carbon stocks that do not necessarily reside in areas of endemism. A hotspot priority approach would not invest so heavily in places such as steppes, the Serengeti, the Arctic, or taiga. These areas contribute a great abundance of population (not species) level biodiversity and ecosystem services, including cultural value and planetary nutrient cycling.

Summary of 2006 IUCN Red List categories: EX (Extinct) - EW (Extinct in the Wild) - CR (Critically Endangered) - EN (Endangered) - VU (Vulnerable) - NT (Near Threatened) - LC (Least Concern)

Those in favor of the hotspot approach point out that species are irreplaceable components of the global ecosystem, they are concentrated in places that are most threatened, and should therefore receive maximal strategic protections. This is a hotspot approach because the priority is set to target species level concerns over population level or biomass.[failed verification ] Species richness and genetic biodiversity contributes to and engenders ecosystem stability, ecosystem processes, evolutionary adaptability, and biomass. Both sides agree, however, that conserving biodiversity is necessary to reduce the extinction rate and identify an inherent value in nature; the debate hinges on how to prioritize limited conservation resources in the most cost-effective way.

Tadrart Acacus desert in western Libya, part of the Sahara

Conservation biologists have started to collaborate with leading global economists to determine how to measure the wealth and services of nature and to make these values apparent in global market transactions. This system of accounting is called natural capital and would, for example, register the value of an ecosystem before it is cleared to make way for development. The WWF publishes its Living Planet Report and provides a global index of biodiversity by monitoring approximately 5,000 populations in 1,686 species of vertebrate (mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians) and report on the trends in much the same way that the stock market is tracked.

This method of measuring the global economic benefit of nature has been endorsed by the G8+5 leaders and the European Commission. Nature sustains many ecosystem services that benefit humanity. Many of the Earth's ecosystem services are public goods without a market and therefore no price or value. When the stock market registers a financial crisis, traders on Wall Street are not in the business of trading stocks for much of the planet's living natural capital stored in ecosystems. There is no natural stock market with investment portfolios into sea horses, amphibians, insects, and other creatures that provide a sustainable supply of ecosystem services that are valuable to society. The ecological footprint of society has exceeded the bio-regenerative capacity limits of the planet's ecosystems by about 30 percent, which is the same percentage of vertebrate populations that have registered decline from 1970 through 2005.

The ecological credit crunch is a global challenge. The Living Planet Report 2008 tells us that more than three-quarters of the world's people live in nations that are ecological debtors - their national consumption has outstripped their country's biocapacity. Thus, most of us are propping up our current lifestyles, and our economic growth, by drawing (and increasingly overdrawing) upon the ecological capital of other parts of the world.

The inherent natural economy plays an essential role in sustaining humanity, including the regulation of global atmospheric chemistry, pollinating crops, pest control, cycling soil nutrients, purifying our water supply, supplying medicines and health benefits, and unquantifiable quality of life improvements. There is a relationship, a correlation, between markets and natural capital, and social income inequity and biodiversity loss. This means that there are greater rates of biodiversity loss in places where the inequity of wealth is greatest

Although a direct market comparison of natural capital is likely insufficient in terms of human value, one measure of ecosystem services suggests the contribution amounts to trillions of dollars yearly. For example, one segment of North American forests has been assigned an annual value of 250 billion dollars; as another example, honey bee pollination is estimated to provide between 10 and 18 billion dollars of value yearly. The value of ecosystem services on one New Zealand island has been imputed to be as great as the GDP of that region. This planetary wealth is being lost at an incredible rate as the demands of human society is exceeding the bio-regenerative capacity of the Earth. While biodiversity and ecosystems are resilient, the danger of losing them is that humans cannot recreate many ecosystem functions through technological innovation.

Keystone species

Some species, called a keystone species form a central supporting hub unique to their ecosystem. The loss of such a species results in a collapse in ecosystem function, as well as the loss of coexisting species. Keystone species are usually predators due to their ability to control the population of prey in their ecosystem. The importance of a keystone species was shown by the extinction of the Steller's sea cow ( Hydrodamalis gigas) through its interaction with sea otters, sea urchins, and kelp. Kelp beds grow and form nurseries in shallow waters to shelter creatures that support the food chain. Sea urchins feed on kelp, while sea otters feed on sea urchins. With the rapid decline of sea otters due to overhunting, sea urchin populations grazed unrestricted on the kelp beds and the ecosystem collapsed. Left unchecked, the urchins destroyed the shallow water kelp communities that supported the Steller's sea cow's diet and hastened their demise. The sea otter was thought to be a keystone species because the coexistence of many ecological associates in the kelp beds relied upon otters for their survival. However this was later questioned by Turvey and Risley, who showed that hunting alone would have driven the Steller's sea cow extinct.

Indicator species

An indicator species has a narrow set of ecological requirements, therefore they become useful targets for observing the health of an ecosystem. Some animals, such as amphibians with their semi-permeable skin and linkages to wetlands, have an acute sensitivity to environmental harm and thus may serve as a miner's canary. Indicator species are monitored in an effort to capture environmental degradation through pollution or some other link to proximate human activities. Monitoring an indicator species is a measure to determine if there is a significant environmental impact that can serve to advise or modify practice, such as through different forest silviculture treatments and management scenarios, or to measure the degree of harm that a pesticide may impart on the health of an ecosystem.

Government regulators, consultants, or NGOs regularly monitor indicator species, however, there are limitations coupled with many practical considerations that must be followed for the approach to be effective. It is generally recommended that multiple indicators (genes, populations, species, communities, and landscape) be monitored for effective conservation measurement that prevents harm to the complex, and often unpredictable, response from ecosystem dynamics (Noss, 1997).

Umbrella and flagship species

An example of an umbrella species is the monarch butterfly, because of its lengthy migrations and aesthetic value. The monarch migrates across North America, covering multiple ecosystems and so requires a large area to exist. Any protections afforded to the monarch butterfly will at the same time umbrella many other species and habitats. An umbrella species is often used as flagship species, which are species, such as the giant panda, the blue whale, the tiger, the mountain gorilla and the monarch butterfly, that capture the public's attention and attract support for conservation measures. Paradoxically, however, conservation bias towards flagship species sometimes threatens other species of chief concern.

Conservation biologists study trends and process from the paleontological past to the ecological present as they gain an understanding of the context related to species extinction. It is generally accepted that there have been five major global mass extinctions that register in Earth's history. These include: the Ordovician (440 mya), Devonian (370 mya), Permian-Triassic (245 mya), Triassic-Jurassic (200 mya), and Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (66 mya) extinction spasms. Within the last 10,000 years, human influence over the Earth's ecosystems has been so extensive that scientists have difficulty estimating the number of species lost; that is to say the rates of deforestation, reef destruction, wetland draining and other human acts are proceeding much faster than human assessment of species. The latest Living Planet Report by the World Wide Fund for Nature estimates that we have exceeded the bio-regenerative capacity of the planet, requiring 1.6 Earths to support the demands placed on our natural resources.

An art scape image showing the relative importance of animals in a rain forest through a summary of (a) child's perception compared with (b) a scientific estimate of the importance. The size of the animal represents its importance. The child's mental image places importance on big cats, birds, butterflies, and then reptiles versus the actual dominance of social insects (such as ants).

Conservation biologists are dealing with and have published evidence from all corners of the planet indicating that humanity may be causing the sixth and fastest planetary extinction event. It has been suggested that an unprecedented number of species is becoming extinct in what is known as the Holocene extinction event. The global extinction rate may be approximately 1,000 times higher than the natural background extinction rate. It is estimated that two-thirds of all mammal genera and one-half of all mammal species weighing at least 44 kilograms (97 lb) have gone extinct in the last 50,000 years. The Global Amphibian Assessment reports that amphibians are declining on a global scale faster than any other vertebrate group, with over 32% of all surviving species being threatened with extinction. The surviving populations are in continual decline in 43% of those that are threatened. Since the mid-1980s the actual rates of extinction have exceeded 211 times rates measured from the fossil record. However, "The current amphibian extinction rate may range from 25,039 to 45,474 times the background extinction rate for amphibians." The global extinction trend occurs in every major vertebrate group that is being monitored. For example, 23% of all mammals and 12% of all birds are Red Listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), meaning they too are threatened with extinction. Even though extinction is natural, the decline in species is happening at such an incredible rate that evolution can simply not match, therefore, leading to the greatest continual mass extinction on Earth. Humans have dominated the planet and our high consumption of resources, along with the pollution generated is affecting the environments in which other species live. There are a wide variety of species that humans are working to protect such as the Hawaiian Crow and the Whooping Crane of Texas. People can also take action on preserving species by advocating and voting for global and national policies that improve climate, under the concepts of climate mitigation and climate restoration. The Earth's oceans demand particular attention as climate change continues to alter pH levels, making it uninhabitable for organisms with shells which dissolve as a result.

Global assessments of coral reefs of the world continue to report drastic and rapid rates of decline. By 2000, 27% of the world's coral reef ecosystems had effectively collapsed. The largest period of decline occurred in a dramatic "bleaching" event in 1998, where approximately 16% of all the coral reefs in the world disappeared in less than a year. Coral bleaching is caused by a mixture of environmental stresses, including increases in ocean temperatures and acidity, causing both the release of symbiotic algae and death of corals. Decline and extinction risk in coral reef biodiversity has risen dramatically in the past ten years. The loss of coral reefs, which are predicted to go extinct in the next century, threatens the balance of global biodiversity, will have huge economic impacts, and endangers food security for hundreds of millions of people. Conservation biology plays an important role in international agreements covering the world's oceans (and other issues pertaining to biodiversity).

These predictions will undoubtedly appear extreme, but it is difficult to imagine how such changes will not come to pass without fundamental changes in human behavior.

The oceans are threatened by acidification due to an increase in CO ₂ levels. This is a most serious threat to societies relying heavily upon oceanic natural resources. A concern is that the majority of all marine species will not be able to evolve or acclimate in response to the changes in the ocean chemistry.

The prospects of averting mass extinction seems unlikely when "90% of all of the large (average approximately ≥50 kg), open ocean tuna, billfishes, and sharks in the ocean" are reportedly gone. Given the scientific review of current trends, the ocean is predicted to have few surviving multi-cellular organisms with only microbes left to dominate marine ecosystems.

Serious concerns also being raised about taxonomic groups that do not receive the same degree of social attention or attract funds as the vertebrates. These include fungal (including lichen-forming species), invertebrate (particularly insect) and plant communities where the vast majority of biodiversity is represented. Conservation of fungi and conservation of insects, in particular, are both of pivotal importance for conservation biology. As mycorrhizal symbionts, and as decomposers and recyclers, fungi are essential for sustainability of forests. The value of insects in the biosphere is enormous because they outnumber all other living groups in measure of species richness. The greatest bulk of biomass on land is found in plants, which is sustained by insect relations. This great ecological value of insects is countered by a society that often reacts negatively toward these aesthetically 'unpleasant' creatures.

One area of concern in the insect world that has caught the public eye is the mysterious case of missing honey bees ( Apis mellifera). Honey bees provide an indispensable ecological services through their acts of pollination supporting a huge variety of agriculture crops. The use of honey and wax have become vastly used throughout the world. The sudden disappearance of bees leaving empty hives or colony collapse disorder (CCD) is not uncommon. However, in 16-month period from 2006 through 2007, 29% of 577 beekeepers across the United States reported CCD losses in up to 76% of their colonies. This sudden demographic loss in bee numbers is placing a strain on the agricultural sector. The cause behind the massive declines is puzzling scientists. Pests, pesticides, and global warming are all being considered as possible causes.

Another highlight that links conservation biology to insects, forests, and climate change is the mountain pine beetle ( Dendroctonus ponderosae) epidemic of British Columbia, Canada, which has infested 470,000 km ² (180,000 sq mi) of forested land since 1999. An action plan has been prepared by the Government of British Columbia to address this problem.

This impact [ pine beetle epidemic] converted the forest from a small net carbon sink to a large net carbon source both during and immediately after the outbreak. In the worst year, the impacts resulting from the beetle outbreak in British Columbia were equivalent to 75% of the average annual direct forest fire emissions from all of Canada during 1959-1999.

A large proportion of parasite species are threatened by extinction. A few of them are being eradicated as pests of humans or domestic animals; however, most of them are harmless. Parasites also make up a significant amount of global biodiversity, given that they make up a large proportion of all species on earth, making them of increasingly prevalent conservation interest. Threats include the decline or fragmentation of host populations, or the extinction of host species. Parasites are intricately woven into ecosystems and food webs, thereby occupying valuable roles in ecosystem structure and function.

Today, many threats to biodiversity exist. An acronym that can be used to express the top threats of present-day H.I.P.P.O stands for Habitat Loss, Invasive Species, Pollution, Human Population, and Overharvesting. The primary threats to biodiversity are habitat destruction (such as deforestation, agricultural expansion, urban development), and overexploitation (such as wildlife trade). Habitat fragmentation also poses challenges, because the global network of protected areas only covers 11.5% of the Earth's surface. A significant consequence of fragmentation and lack of linked protected areas is the reduction of animal migration on a global scale. Considering that billions of tonnes of biomass are responsible for nutrient cycling across the earth, the reduction of migration is a serious matter for conservation biology.

Human activities are associated directly or indirectly with nearly every aspect of the current extinction spasm.

However, human activities need not necessarily cause irreparable harm to the biosphere. With conservation management and planning for biodiversity at all levels, from genes to ecosystems, there are examples where humans mutually coexist in a sustainable way with nature. Even with the current threats to biodiversity there are ways we can improve the current condition and start anew.

Many of the threats to biodiversity, including disease and climate change, are reaching inside borders of protected areas, leaving them 'not-so protected' (e.g. Yellowstone National Park). Climate change, for example, is often cited as a serious threat in this regard, because there is a feedback loop between species extinction and the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Ecosystems store and cycle large amounts of carbon which regulates global conditions. In present day, there have been major climate shifts with temperature changes making survival of some species difficult. The effects of global warming add a catastrophic threat toward a mass extinction of global biological diversity. Numerous more species are predicted to face unprecedented levels of extinction risk due to population increase, climate change and economic development in the future. Conservationists have claimed that not all the species can be saved, and they have to decide which their efforts should be used to protect. This concept is known as the Conservation Triage. The extinction threat is estimated to range from 15 to 37 percent of all species by 2050, or 50 percent of all species over the next 50 years. The current extinction rate is 100-100,000 times more rapid today than the last several billion years.

Scientific literature

Bowen, Brian W. (1999). "Preserving genes, species, or ecosystems? Healing the fractured foundations of conservation policy". Molecular Ecology. 8 (s1): S5-S10. doi:10.1046/j.1365-294X.1999.00798.x. PMID 10703547. S2CID 33096004.

Kareiva P.; Marvier M. (2003). "Conserving Biodiversity Coldspots" (PDF). American Scientist. 91 (4): 344-351. doi:10.1511/2003.4.344. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 6, 2006.

Manlik, Oliver. (2019). "The Importance of Reproduction for the Conservation of Slow-Growing Animal Populations". Reproductive Sciences in Animal Conservation. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. Vol. 1200. pp. 13-39. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-23633-5_2. ISBN 978-3-030-23633-5. PMID 31471793. S2CID 201756810.

McCallum M. L. (2008). "Amphibian Decline or Extinction? Current Declines Dwarf Background Extinction Rate" (PDF). Journal of Herpetology. 41 (3): 483-491. doi:10.1670/0022-1511(2007)41[483:ADOECD]2.0.CO;2. S2CID 30162903. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-12-17.

McCallum M. L. (2015). "Vertebrate biodiversity losses point to a sixth mass extinction". Biodiversity and Conservation. 24 (10): 2497-2519. doi:10.1007/s10531-015-0940-6. S2CID 254285797.

McCallum, Malcolm L. (2021). "Turtle biodiversity losses suggest coming sixth mass extinction". Biodiversity and Conservation. 30 (5): 1257-1275. doi:10.1007/s10531-021-02140-8. S2CID 233903598.

Kareiva P.; Marvier M. (2003). "Conserving Biodiversity Coldspots" (PDF). American Scientist. 91 (4): 344-351. doi:10.1511/2003.4.344. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 6, 2006.

Mccallum, Malcolm L.; Bury, Gwendolyn W. (2013). "Google search patterns suggest declining interest in the environment". Biodiversity and Conservation. 22 (6-7): 1355-67. doi:10.1007/s10531-013-0476-6. S2CID 15593201.

Wake, D. B.; Vredenburg, V. T. (2008). "Are we in the midst of the sixth mass extinction? A view from the world of amphibians". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105 (Suppl 1): 11466-73. Bibcode:2008PNAS..10511466W. doi:10.1073/pnas.0801921105. PMC . PMID 18695221.

Textbooks

General non-fiction

Periodicals

Training manuals

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Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an interdisciplinary subject drawing on natural and social sciences, and the practice of natural resource management.

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© The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine

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The Many Types Of Mucus - Science Friday

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The Many Types Of Mucus - Science Friday

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Boogers, snot, and loogies-mucus doesn't usually inspire pleasant thoughts. Even the word "mucus" grosses people out. Despite our unpleasant reactions to this slimy substance, mucus is a superhero in our battle to maintain a healthy internal environment (our microbiome) and to keep our bodies functioning smoothly. In this resource, you will learn about mighty mucus and use slime as a model to explore some amazing properties of this vital, albeit icky, substance.

The Lowdown On Mucus

Mucus is not a waste product or just fuel for a sneeze. Even when we are blowing our noses, mucus is providing a valuable service. We have mucus all over our bodies-our eyes, noses, throats, lungs, digestive tract, and even genitalia. It is estimated that we create one gallon of mucus a day, and yes we are swallowing mucus all the time.

How Does Mucus Help Us Out?

1. Mucus acts as a physical barrier, trapping unwanted particles from entering our bodies and flushing them from our body. Think runny nose!

2. Mucus moisturizes tissues in our body, acting as a lubricant. Without mucus, we couldn't blink, swallow, or even poop!

3. Mucus can defend against infection by facilitating the movement of antibodies or white blood cells to sites of infection, and even altering the behavior of pathogens!

4. Mucus helps house the human body's massive microbiome, even working to 'tame' it, making sure normally beneficial microbes don't go rogue.

What Is Mucus Made Of?

One of the researchers uncovering the amazing properties of mucus is Katharina Ribbeck, biochemist and principal investigator at the Laboratory for Biological Hydrogels at MIT. Ribbeck's lab group has shown that mucus can interfere with bacterial behavior, preventing communication with other bacteria and even attachment to surfaces. Mucus also fosters and houses microbial communities that help our bodies in a variety of ways. Their work has shown that cervical mucus of pregnant women can potentially be used as a predictor for preterm labor, much of which is shown in its physical properties. Whoa!

Ribbeck was on Science Friday to discuss some of the seriously cool science behind mucus.

Conduct A Mucus Experiment!

Mucus is a type of slime. Below are three different synthetic slime recipes that you can use to model mucus. Although these slime recipes are relatively safe, please create slime with the supervision of an adult. We recommend using gloves if you have sensitive skin.

Slime #1: Gelatin Slime

Ingredients

- ½ cup water (125 mL)
- 3 packs gelatin (approx. 7 g)
- ¼ light corn syrup (62.5 mL)

Directions

1. Heat water (do not boil) and mix in gelatin with a spoon.

2. Let mixture cool slightly, then gently mix in light corn syrup.

3. Use your spoon to stretch and play with your slime!

Slime #2: Classic Borax Slime

Ingredients

- ¼ tsp borax powder (found with laundry products)
- ½ cup clear washable PVA school glue (like Elmer's Glue™)
- 1 cup of water divided into ½ cups

Directions

1. Dissolve the borax powder into ½ cup of warm water.

2. Separately, mix ½ cup of clear glue with ½ cup of water.

3. Pour borax-water mixture into glue-water mixture and stir with a spoon. It will be clumpy.

4. Remove from bowl and knead the mixture together until you achieve desired slime consistency.

Slime #3: Contact Solution Slime

Ingredients

- 1 ½ tbsp contact lens solution (one that contains boric acid and sodium borate)
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 2 tbsp water
- 6 oz clear washable PVA school glue (like Elmer's Glue™)

Directions

1. Empty the entire 6 oz container of glue into a bowl.

2. Add baking soda and water and mix thoroughly.

3. Slowly add a ½ tbsp of contact lens solution, while stirring. Then mix/knead the mixture.

4. Repeat the previous step until the desired consistency is reached.

Want to make it more icky looking? Add food coloring during the initial step of any recipe to alter the color of your slime. A little goes a long way.
Slime Reflection
For each slime recipe, reflect on the following questions:

- What does your slime feel like?

- When you pull your slime upwards does it stretch or break?

- How watery does your slime seem?

-How easily does your slime flow or pour? Does it have a low viscosity (pours easily) or a high viscosity?

-Rub your slime between your hands. Does it reduce friction between your hands (lubricate) or increase it?

-Try plopping your slime onto a dusty or dirty surface. Does it capture small particles or leave them behind?

-BONUS: How could you quantify how moist your slime is?

Challenge: After learning more about the mucus related research of Ribbeck and her lab group at MIT, which slime recipe do you think is the "best" model of mucus? Justify your choice using information you learned about mucus above.

Slime! A Mucus Model

Scientific models are simplified representations of a system that can help us to explain and make predictions regarding phenomena. You are going to use slime as a model to explore the mucus system in different bodily areas and functions.

Mucus produced in different cavities and surfaces in the body varies widely. The mucus layer over your eye is not the same as the one secreted in your nose. Mucus even changes based on life events or changes in health. Ever had a runny nose? Also, remember the cervical cancer example discussed at the beginning of this activity.

Think about the different ways that mucus helps you, or put another way, the functions it performs in your body. How might the characteristics (e.g, viscosity, moisture, stickiness) of that mucus be different in each of those scenarios?

Create Your Mucus Models

Using information from Katharina's Science Friday interview, the video above, and the collection of mucus resources below identify three functions or properties of mucus you want to model.

Choose a slime recipe that you think would best model the mucous function you are trying to demonstrate. Manipulate the recipe (by incorporating more or less of different ingredients) to achieve the viscosity or consistency you think would best support a particular function.

Mucus Model Reflection

For each of your three models, reflect on the following questions:

- What property or function of mucus were you trying to model?

- What consistency or viscosity were you trying to create?

- How did you alter the recipe to create your model?

- How did this change model for this function of mucus effectively?

- What are the limitations of your model?

Mucus In Nature

Meet the giant larvacean and its house built of snot! Humans are not the only organisms that create biological hydrogels like mucus. In fact, many marine organisms have a mucus layer the keeps them healthy and some even serve ecological functions. Giant larvacean are solitary free-swimming marine animals that use mucus to trap food!

Learn more about the giant larvacean from The House That Snot Built Science Friday segment. After exploring more about how giant larvaceans create their snot houses. Think about your three slime recipes:

- How you would model a marine mucus that can function as a filter?

- How would you test that model?

More Mucus Awesomeness Explained!

NGSS Standards

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Boogers, snot, and loogies-mucus doesn't usually inspire pleasant thoughts. Even the word "mucus" grosses people out. Despite our unpleasant reactions to this slimy substance, mucus is a superhero in our battle to maintain a healthy internal environment (our microbiome) and to keep our bodies functioning smoothly.

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Microscope Imaging Station | Exploratorium Video

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Microscope Imaging Station | Exploratorium Video

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Visitors to the Microscope Imaging Station can control research-grade microscopes to examine various living specimens. In addition, the MIS produces high-resolution still images and movies about subjects such as cancer cells and blood cells. The website features stories, image and video galleries, and classroom activities.

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Visitors to the Microscope Imaging Station can control research-grade microscopes to examine various living specimens. In addition, the MIS produces high-resolution still images and movies about subjects such as cancer cells and blood cells. The website features stories, image and video galleries, and classroom activities.

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Dissection Alternative

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Read fact sheets on: comparative studies showing that students learn just as well using alternatives; the cost of dissection alternatives vs. dissection; the environmental impact of dissection; and problems with cat dissection. View online or download the PDFs.

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All videos can be found on the YouTube playlists:

Playlist with examples from students

Playlist with materials for teachers (tutorials, highlights, project summaries, ...)

Impressions of the piloting workshop run by the University of Kassel
Tutorials Highlights module 1: "Plants in the seasons"

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All videos can be found on the YouTube playlists: Playlist with examples from students Playlist with materials for teachers (tutorials, highlights, project summaries, ...) Impressions of the piloting workshop run by the University of Kassel Tutorials Highlights module 1: "Plants in the seasons"

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What are model organisms? | Facts | yourgenome.org

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What are model organisms? | Facts | yourgenome.org

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A model organism is a species that has been widely studied, usually because it is easy to maintain and breed in a laboratory setting and has particular experimental advantages.

Model organisms are non-human species that are used in the laboratory to help scientists understand biological processes.

They are usually organisms that are easy to maintain and breed in a laboratory setting.

For example, they may have particularly robust embryos that are easily studied and manipulated in the lab, this is useful for scientists studying development.

Or they may occupy a pivotal position in the evolutionary tree, this is useful for scientists studying evolution.

Why are model organisms useful in genetics research?

Many model organisms can breed in large numbers.

Some have a very short generation time, which is the time between being born and being able to reproduce, so several generations can be followed at once

Mutants allow scientists to study certain characteristics or diseases. These are model organisms that have undergone a change or mutation in their DNA that may result in a change in a certain characteristic.

Some model organisms have similar genes or similar-sized genomes to humans.

Model organisms can be used to create highly detailed genetic maps:

Genetic maps are a visual representation of the location of different genes on a chromosome, a bit like a real map but one where the key landmarks are areas of interest in the genome.

For example, areas of DNA that differ between individuals in the same species (SNPs) or genes.

Examples of model organisms used to study genetics

Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae)

Fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster)

Nematode worm (Caenorhabditis elegans)

Western clawed frog (Xenopus tropicalis)

Mouse (Mus musculus)

Zebrafish (Danio rerio)

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A model organism is a species that has been widely studied, usually because it is easy to maintain and breed in a laboratory setting and has particular experimental advantages. Model organisms are non-human species that are used in the laboratory to help scientists understand biological processes.

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In this lesson, students will connect to the essential question, "What do the effects of life events look like?" through the skill of summarizing. To answer that question, students will summarize a slam poem, a short story, and a recent Presidential Speech. To make a personal connection to the skill...

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Isabella Kirkland's work presents a seamless blend of art and science with attention to the techniques of the Dutch Old Masters, as well as her meticulous approach to her subject through a scientific lens.

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Isabella Kirkland's work presents a seamless blend of art and science with attention to the techniques of the Dutch Old Masters, as well as her meticulous approach to her subject through a scientific lens.

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Satisfy your curiosity with the Australian Academy of Science-verified by Australia's top scientists, it's content you can trust.

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Cartoons Ecology Biology Environment Wildlife Nature

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Cartoons Ecology Biology Environment Wildlife Nature

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Cartoons Ecology Biology Environment Wildlife Nature

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ANIMAL CARTOONS NATURE CARTOONS ENVIRONMENT CARTOONS CLIMATE CARTOONS GLOBAL WARMING CARTOONS POLLUTION CARTOONS

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Diversity of Nervous Systems | Biology for Majors II

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Diversity of Nervous Systems | Biology for Majors II

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Nervous systems throughout the animal kingdom vary in structure and complexity, as illustrated by the variety of animals shown in Figure 1. Some organisms, like sea sponges, lack a true nervous system. Others, like jellyfish, lack a true brain and instead have a system of separate but connected nerve cells (neurons) called a "nerve net." Echinoderms such as sea stars have nerve cells that are bundled into fibers called nerves.

Flatworms of the phylum Platyhelminthes have both a central nervous system (CNS), made up of a small "brain" and two nerve cords, and a peripheral nervous system (PNS) containing a system of nerves that extend throughout the body. The insect nervous system is more complex but also fairly decentralized. It contains a brain, ventral nerve cord, and ganglia (clusters of connected neurons). These ganglia can control movements and behaviors without input from the brain. Octopi may have the most complicated of invertebrate nervous systems-they have neurons that are organized in specialized lobes and eyes that are structurally similar to vertebrate species.

Compared to invertebrates, vertebrate nervous systems are more complex, centralized, and specialized. While there is great diversity among different vertebrate nervous systems, they all share a basic structure: a CNS that contains a brain and spinal cord and a PNS made up of peripheral sensory and motor nerves. One interesting difference between the nervous systems of invertebrates and vertebrates is that the nerve cords of many invertebrates are located ventrally whereas the vertebrate spinal cords are located dorsally. There is debate among evolutionary biologists as to whether these different nervous system plans evolved separately or whether the invertebrate body plan arrangement somehow "flipped" during the evolution of vertebrates.

Watch this video of biologist Mark Kirschner discussing the "flipping" phenomenon of vertebrate evolution.

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Nervous systems throughout the animal kingdom vary in structure and complexity, as illustrated by the variety of animals shown in Figure 1. Some organisms, like sea sponges, lack a true nervous system. Others, like jellyfish, lack a true brain and instead have a system of separate but connected nerve cells (neurons) called a "nerve net."

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Be Part of
Ask A Biologist

By volunteering, or simply sending us feedback on the site. Scientists, teachers, writers, illustrators, and translators are all important to the program. If you are interested in helping with the website we have a Volunteers page to get the process started.

Contribute

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Scientists are learning new things every day. They are also writing about their discoveries. In most cases they publish in science magazines called journals like the Public Library of Science (PLOS). In our PLOSable section you will find stories that will help you read and explore the articles written by scientists.

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keystone species | National Geographic Society

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keystone species | National Geographic Society

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In any arrangement or community, the "keystone" is considered one of the most vital parts. In a marine ecosystem, or any type of ecosystem, a keystone species is an organism that helps hold the system together. Without its keystone species, ecosystems would look very different. Some ecosystems might not be able to adapt to environmental changes if their keystone species disappeared. That could spell the end of the ecosystem, or it could allow an invasive species to take over and dramatically shift the ecosystem in a new direction.

Since a keystone species is not a formal designation, scientists may debate which plants or animals in a particular ecosystem deserve the title. Some wildlife scientists say the concept oversimplifies one animal or plant's role in complex food webs and habitats. On the other hand, calling a particular plant or animal in an ecosystem a keystone species is a way to help the public understand just how important one species can be to the survival of many others.

There are three types of keystone species cited by many scientists: predators, ecosystem engineers, and mutualists.
Predators
Predators help control the populations of prey species, which in turn affects the quantity of plants and animals further along the food web. Sharks, for example, often prey upon old or sick fish, leaving healthier animals to flourish. Simply by their presence near sea grass beds, sharks are able to keep smaller animals from overgrazing and wiping out the grass. Scientists in Australia observed that when tiger sharks were not near the grass beds, sea turtles-among tiger sharks' favorite prey-tended to decimate them. But when tiger sharks patrolled the grass beds, the sea turtles were forced to graze across a much wider region.
Ecosystem Engineers
An ecosystem engineer is an organism that creates, changes, or destroys a habitat. There is perhaps no clearer example of a keystone engineer than the beaver. River ecosystems rely on beavers to take down old or dead trees along riverbanks to use for their dams. This allows new, healthier trees to grow in abundance. The dams divert water in rivers, creating wetlands that allow a variety of animals and plants to thrive.
Mutualists
When two or more species in an ecosystem interact for each other's benefit, they are called mutualists. Bees are a primary example of this. As bees take the nectar from flowers, they collect pollen and spread it from one flower to the next, enhancing the odds of fertilization and greater flower growth. Nectar and pollen are also the primary food sources for the bees themselves.

Some scientists identify other categories of keystone species. One alternate list includes predators, herbivores, and mutualists. Another cites predators, mutualists, and competitors for resources.

Keystone species can also be plants. Mangrove trees, for instance, serve a keystone role in many coastlines by firming up shorelines and reducing erosion. They also provide a safe haven and feeding area for small fish among their roots, which reach down through the shallow water.

In many cases, the vital role of a keystone species in an ecosystem is not fully appreciated until that species is gone. Ecologist Robert Paine, who coined the term "keystone species" in the 1960s, observed the importance of such species in a study of starfish along the rocky Pacific coastline in Washington state. The starfish fed on mussels, which kept the mussel population in check and allowed many other species to thrive. When the starfish were removed from the area as part of an experiment, the mussel population swelled and crowded out other species. The biodiversity of the ecosystem was drastically reduced. Payne's study showed that identifying and protecting keystone species can help preserve the population of many other species.

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Keystone Species | National Geographic Society

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In any arrangement or community, the "keystone" is considered one of the most vital parts. In a marine ecosystem, or any type of ecosystem, a keystone species is an organism that helps hold the system together. Without its keystone species, ecosystems would look very different.

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Given that there are many historical definitions of the keystone species concept, and without a consensus on its exact definition, a list of examples best illustrates the concept of keystone...

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Beauty of Science (BOS) is an educational brand that produces inspiring content for science education and outreach.

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Partnering with Scientists & Educators — The Endocrine Disruption Exchange

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Partnering with Scientists & Educators — The Endocrine Disruption Exchange

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TEDX - The Endocrine Disruption Exchange

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TEDX partners with scientists to support research and teaching, foster collaborations, and provide resources for...

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Mary Oliver's Poetry Captures Our Relationship With Technology - The Atlantic

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Mary Oliver's Poetry Captures Our Relationship With Technology - The Atlantic

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I worried that the culture would succumb to this stultification and I wouldn't be immune. Thus, my self-prescribed daily dose of poetry to sharpen the faculties that stare at the world. I would read to bulwark my attention against the assault waged by my phone.

On the 17th day of the year, the poet Mary Oliver died, and I pulled her books from the shelf. Her oeuvre became my morning ritual-and because she wrote with directness, the windowpane clarity achieved when a writer aims to persuade, I found myself reading many pages at a time. There were poems I knew, the ones recited at weddings or quoted on yearbook pages ("Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?"). But this was the first time I had read Oliver beyond her hits. Her books had tumbled into my arms at the right moment. Her collected works amount to an instruction manual for how to focus the gaze. The exhortations that filled her poems became my command: "To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."

In the age of surveillance capitalism, the biggest corporations redirect the gaze, exploiting the psyche's vulnerabilities for profit. Even silenced phones light up with notifications that break eye contact and disrupt concentration. YouTube plays videos in an endless loop, queued on the basis of intimate data, so that the emotional rush of one clip stokes the desire to watch the next. Facebook, the ultimate manipulation machine, arrays information to exploit the psychic weaknesses of users, with the intent of keeping them on its site for as long as it can. The hand touches the phone upon waking, even before it can rub the eye or reach across the bed to wake the spouse.

While society has grown a little wiser to how the technologies can be exploited by foreign governments and boiler rooms spewing misinformation, the costs of allowing our attention to be commandeered remain drastically understated. It was not Mary Oliver's intent to critique this new world-and it's hard to imagine she even owned a flip phone-but her poetry captures its spiritual costs.
Read: From the archives: "Moccasin Flowers," a poem by Mary Oliver
Her final collection of essays was called Upstream. In the title piece, she remembers getting separated from her parents in the woods as they stroll along a creek. But what she recalls isn't the trauma of being lost, but the attentiveness she achieves in that charged moment of aloneness, "the sense of going toward the source." In her narration, this is the very instant she began her long career as a noticer. What she sees isn't an undifferentiated mass of a forest or an abstraction called "nature." Her revelation is the pluralism of the woods. "One tree is like another, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether." This discovery of the "harmonies and also the discords of the natural world" fills her with ecstatic joy. "Doesn't anybody in the world anymore want to get up in the / middle of the night and / sing?"

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'Attention Is the Beginning of Devotion'

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I worried that the culture would succumb to this stultification and I wouldn't be immune. Thus, my self-prescribed daily dose of poetry to sharpen the faculties that stare at the world. I would read to bulwark my attention against the assault waged by my phone.

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Our NCSE Teacher Ambassadors developed and field-tested five lessons that focus on combatting misconceptions. Download the lessons and watch accompanying webinars.

Want to read more about the science and bring it to your classrooms? Here are just a few NCSE staff picks:
Keep Heartland Out of Science Classrooms Top 5 Reasons Why This Book Doesn't Belong in Classrooms Heartland's Claims Against the 97% Climate Consensus Teaching Climate Change: Best Practices
Want to Teach Middle Schoolers about Climate Change? Start with a Fish Tank
Rethinking Climate Change Education
In the Classroom: Climate Change Chemistry

Teaching Climate Science: It's Elementary

In the Classroom: Elementary Lesson on Sea Level Rise
Walking and Talking Evolution
Need Help Teaching Natural Selection? Try This!
A Fishy and Fun Tale from Scientist in the Classroom Even the Classics Can Surprise You
A New Book to Introduce Evolution to Preschoolers: Grandmother Fish
In the Classroom: Sneak Attack Evolution! The Parent Trap Redux When the School Board Attacks Science When Students Ask about Religion To Teach or Not to Teach: is that really the question?
Excerpt: The Missing Link: An Inquiry Approach for Teaching All Students About Evolution by Lee Meadows

Climate Change 101: A brief overview of climate change science.

Teaching Climate Change: Best Practices: A collection of resources with basic information on climate literacy and tools for overcoming misconceptions in the classroom.

The Climate Literacy & Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN): A catalog of existing online resources that have been reviewed for scientific accuracy and pedagogical potential. The catalog can be searched by grade level, resource type and other criteria. Included are learning activities, videos, visualizations, and tips for teaching.

The U.S. Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy: An "education toolbox" that teachers can search for lesson plans, videos, and other resources by topic and grade level.

NASA Wavelength: A digital collection of reviewed resources for Earth and space science educators. Searches can be filtered by topic, grade level, and strategy. Resources include videos, activities, informative text, models, and demonstrations.

Climate.gov: A multi-purpose resource from the U.S. government on climate change. It includes educational activities, a library of presentations that can be downloaded, and access to climate data and services.

U.S. Global Change Research Program: A compilation of climate change resources such as the Climate Literacy Framework and climate change education videos from the National Park Service.

NASA's Global Climate Change Website: High-quality information about climate science from America's space agency. Winner of the 2011 Webby Award for Best Science Site, it includes engaging interactive activities and a series of quizzes on a variety of climate-related topics.

The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change: From the Paleontological Research Institute.

Alliance for Climate Education: ACE's mission is "to educate young people on the science of climate change and empower them to take action." New from ACE: Our Climate, Our Future.

UC Berkeley's Understanding Evolution Resource Library: A "one stop shop" for teaching and understanding evolution, including an Evolution 101 link for students and teaching resources for kindergarten through undergraduate educators.

NOVA's Evolution Lab: A phylogeny puzzle game and an interactive tree of life that helps students explore the relationships between species and the history of life on Earth. It also includes a collection of videos that outline the evidence for evolution and lesson planning resources for educators.

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: Information for teachers and students from the Smithsonian's Human Origins Initiative. The site also has a Teacher's Forum, which provides a private online space for educators to share information with each other about teaching human evolution. Lesson plans are available for grades 9-12.

HHMI's Biointeractive: At BioInteractive, you can find award-winning multimedia resources that bring the excitement of scientific discovery into your classroom-all 100% free. There are hundreds of evolution-related assets, ranging from short films and lectures to animations and apps. Each short film serves as a launching point for many classroom-ready materials developed in collaborations between scientists and educators.

Evolution: Education & Outreach: This open-access journal promotes accurate understanding and comprehensive teaching of evolutionary theory for a wide audience. Targeting K-16 students, teachers, and scientists alike, the journal presents articles to aid members of these communities in the teaching of evolutionary theory. It connects teachers with scientists by adapting cutting-edge, peer-reviewed articles for classroom use on varied instructional levels.

UC Berkeley's National Conference on the Teaching of Evolution Resource Matrix: A list of resources recommended by participants of the conference. Resources include articles and books, as well as textbooks and software recommendations.

Cornell University's Paleontological Research Institution: A series of Teacher-Friendly Guides that are written to provide teachers with the scientific background they need to introduce Earth systems science topics in their classrooms.

Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science: A well-structured framework from the National Academy of Sciences for understanding and teaching evolution. Written for teachers, parents, and community officials as well as scientists and educators, this web-based version explains how evolution reveals both the great diversity and similarity among Earth's organisms. It explores how scientists approach the question of evolution and illustrates the nature of science as a way to understand the natural world.

ActionBioscience.org: ActionBioscience.org is an education resource of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, aiming to promote bioscience literacy. The site provides peer-reviewed articles on issues related to seven bioscience challenges: environment, biodiversity, genomics, biotechnology, evolution, new frontiers in science, and bioscience education. In addition, the web site provides educators with original lessons and other resources to enhance bioscience teaching. Select articles are translated into Spanish. The site was chosen as the 2003 best biology site by Scientific American and the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse of the U.S. Dept. of Education honored it with the Digital Dozen Award for quality content in 2002.

Evolution and the Nature of Science Institutes (ENSI): Originally NSF-funded, the ENSI program focused on teaching teachers about the nature of science, using evolution as the exemplar. A site for teachers by other teachers with lots of classroom-tested exercises available free of charge.

Have resources you'd like to share? Get in touch with us at info@ncse.com.

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Climate Change LessonsOur NCSE Teacher Ambassadors developed and field-tested five lessons that focus on combatting misconceptions. Download the lessons and watch accompanying webinars.

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Improving Science Education Through Three-Dimensional Learning

Quick Search Next Generation Science Standards

THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF SCIENCE LEARNING

Within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), there are three distinct and equally important dimensions to learning science. These dimensions are combined to form each standard-or performance expectation-and each dimension works with the other two to help students build a cohesive understanding of science over time.

Crosscutting Concepts help students explore connections across the four domains of science, including Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Engineering Design.

When these concepts, such as "cause and effect", are made explicit for students, they can help students develop a coherent and scientifically-based view of the world around them.

Science and Engineering Practices describe what scientists do to investigate the natural world and what engineers do to design and build systems. The practices better explain and extend what is meant by "inquiry" in science and the range of cognitive, social, and physical practices that it requires. Students engage in practices to build, deepen, and apply their knowledge of core ideas and crosscutting concepts.

Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs) are the key ideas in science that have broad importance within or across multiple science or engineering disciplines. These core ideas build on each other as students progress through grade levels and are grouped into the following four domains: Physical Science, Life Science, Earth and Space Science, and Engineering.

More about 3D Learning

GET TO KNOW

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are K-12 science content standards. Standards set the expectations for what students should know and be able to do. The NGSS were developed by states to improve science education for all students.

A goal for developing the NGSS was to create a set of research-based, up-to-date K-12 science standards. These standards give local educators the flexibility to design classroom learning experiences that stimulate students' interests in science and prepares them for college, careers, and citizenship.

Get to Know the Standards

IMPLEMENT

The NGSS call for a three-dimensional approach to K-12 science instruction. This represents a significant transition from previous state standards. That's why effective implementation demands a great deal of collaboration and patience among states, districts, schools, teachers, and students.

Thoughtful and coordinated approaches to implementation will enable educators to inspire future generations of scientifically literate students. That is the vision of the NGSS. This website provides a range of high-quality resources that empower educators, administrators, parents, and the general public to help bring this vision to life.

Find Tools and Resources

WHY

Science-and therefore science education-is central to the lives of all Americans.

A high-quality science education means that students will develop an in-depth understanding of content and develop key skills-communication, collaboration, inquiry, problem solving, and flexibility-that will serve them throughout their educational and professional lives.

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Home Page | Next Generation Science Standards

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Improving Science Education Through Three-Dimensional Learning Quick Search Next Generation Science Standards Within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), there are three distinct and equally important dimensions to learning science. These dimensions are combined to form each standard-or performance expectation-and each dimension works with the other two to help students build a cohesive understanding of science over time.

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Natural History is Dying, and We Are All the Losers - Scientific American Blog Network

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Natural History is Dying, and We Are All the Losers - Scientific American Blog Network

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A few weeks ago, I came across a new paper in BioScience called "Natural History's Place in Science and Society" that contained the following graph.

On the right axis and indicated by the line surrounded by dots is the proportion of introductory biology texts devoted to natural history since 1935.

The left axis and the bars show the minimum number of natural history-related courses required for a BS degree in biology in US colleges and universities since 1955. The median number is indicated in writing inside the bar. You'll note that since 1995, the median number of courses has been zero. Zilch. Zip.

In other words, the people society depends on to know the most about life -- people with college biology degrees -- in nearly all cases have no obligation to learn anything about actual living organisms. To me, this is a shocking dereliction.
My Story
As a child, I had access to something that few children do today: nature. I remember roaming the big yard and woods around our rural Tennessee home solo at four, five, six years old.

That quiet time wandering, listening, and looking among the loblolly pines and playing in the red dirt planted a love in me of nature that didn't germinate until years later. It wasn't until late high school, in fact, that I realized I loved biology and wanted to be a biologist (incredibly, in middle school and early high school I thought I wanted to be a lawyer).

But within two years of arriving at college, I knew two things. 1) I loved biology with all my heart. 2) I could never be a biologist. The thought of interminable hours spent in a windowless room staring at tubes of clear liquids and working on one tiny slice of molecular biology to the exclusion of all other intellectual curiosities depressed me beyond belief. I wanted to be a generalist -- to study lots of different kinds of things. It got so bad I felt physically ill every time it was time to go into the lab where I was doing my independent research. And yet I had no desire to change my major. I LOVED biology.

In oceanography my freshman year of college, we studied ocean currents, salinity, and the ecology of plankton. We studied vague notions of food webs and nutrient cycling rather than learning what dinoflagellates or copepods were. The chapters on the diversity of life in the ocean? We skipped those. But those were the ones I wanted to read most.

I loved the classes especially that taught me about the diversity of life, that took me out into the field to see it up close, that let me watch it moving and wiggling under the microscope, that let me dissect animals or flowers to see how they worked, that taught me about their evolution and the history of life on Earth. But no biologist did that stuff any more -- at least not for the major part of their time. What they did, I found, was sit in an office staring at a computer screen writing grant applications and papers or creating computer models of their organisms or studying molecular biology. Occasionally, they went to meetings or mentored students or taught a class. That was *not* the bill of goods I felt I'd been sold on what biology was -- and what it meant to be a biologist -- as a child.

A life as a biologist would, ironically, prevent me from learning about life -- or, at least, the spectrum of life that I wanted to learn about -- and sharing it with the public. And so I became a science writer (albeit with career prospects arguably even worse than those of a scientist), and when the time was right I founded this blog dedicated to natural history and biodiversity.

There are other reasons I did not become a professor, but the lack of ability to be a natural history generalist was one of them. In another age, in another time (and assuming I'd been born a man), I might perhaps become a professor of natural history, a generalist who taught students biology and natural history, perhaps specialized in one or two extremely large groups of organisms (plants, fungi, etc.), wrote popular articles for the public, and wrote scientific papers about this or that interesting thing I'd noticed in the field. But by my time, those days had gone. That was no longer an option. And the reason for that is another story.
The Unfashionable Science
Just what is natural history? One thing that has not helped it, perhaps, is that name. The term is beautiful but also old-fashioned and a bit puzzling. I know what nature is. I know what history is. So is natural history the story of life on Earth? That's part of it, but the term is meant more broadly. When the phrase was coined, history meant something more like "description", according to mammologist David Schmidly, and so you could view natural history as a description of nature, and naturalists those who describe it, ask questions about the creatures' origin, evolution, behavior, anatomy and relationships using science. Vague "ecology" and unwieldy "organismal biology" encompass much the same thing, but lack the romance of the older term. Naturalists are interested in organisms and groups of organisms for their own sake, and not just what those organisms can tell them about higher order processes like DNA replication or genetic drift. Rather, they are more interested in what higher order theories and processes can tell them about their organism.

Aristotle was the first practitioner of this science that we know of, and some of his observations on sea creatures betray a skill for detailed observation and deduction that remains impressive today. Natural history did not flourish, however, until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Linnaeus, Darwin, and even U.S. Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt were avid and avowed naturalists. It was a time when basic knowledge of local plants and animals was considered part of a good education -- and of being a good citizen (although it should be said the fad for natural history led to some unfortunate over-collecting and braggadocio as well).

The enthusiasm encompassed schoolchildren as well. Anna Botsford Comstock, who attended and taught at my own alma mater Cornell, published a textbook in 1911 for elementary students and teachers called Handbook of Nature-Study which exploded in popular sales. Between 1890 and 1940 texts such as hers were an essential part of classrooms across America. The aim was to train teachers and facilitate direct contact between children and living organisms in order to create an " essential nature literacy", as Robert Michael Pyle described it in Orion in 2000.

Naturalists, too, commanded respect at universities, and taught many field classes and courses dedicated to identifying and understanding the life histories and evolutionary relationships of particular groups of organisms: flowering plants, mosses, lichens, mammals, fungi, insects, invertebrates, birds, insects, fossils, birds, and so on -- a host of tangible living things to which people could directly relate.

After World War II, everything changed. Pyle attributes the subsequent decline in natural history to the ascendency of the hard sciences in the era of the atom bomb and Sputnik, and to the large-scale desertion of the farm (and its surrounding forests, bogs, and streams) for the nature-impoverished city and suburbs. The fundamental and accelerating problem is the increasing distance between people -- particularly biologists and children -- and nature.

That most professional biologists should know so little about life outside their labs is rather shocking, when you think about it. But this process began in the 20th century. At universities, process began to trump product, and what was once an esteemed part of biology evolved into a dusty, fusty relict. The pendulum swung away from outdoor field studies toward indoors laboratory research on fundamental processes. Scientists who studied underlying processes of biology -- evolution, cell biology, biochemistry, etc., -- got bigger grants and better publications than those who studied the organisms themselves. Funding and grants for natural history evaporated, and with them, tenured faculty positions. Pyle recalls his own college experience: "The only young naturalist on the faculty, shortly after receiving the outstanding teaching award for his magnificent classes in field natural history, was denied tenure; the department wanted superstar lab candidates who published frequently in all the right journals. A few profs interested in complete organisms survived by being strong on theory."

Experimental biology became too complex for generalists to succeed as scientists, while big bucks for biomedical research and genetics lured biologists from the field to the lab and pushed the focus away from complete organisms and onto cells, DNA and genes found in colorless liquids inside clear Eppendorf tubes.

"Academic naturalists" thus found themselves selected against in the cruel Darwinian tenure competition. The -ology classes they taught and their associated field trips vanished. The Departments of Zoology, Botany, etc. were replaced with Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, or Molecular and Cell Biology, or Genetics. Many universities got rid of their specimen collections, which are not only vital to studying evolution, but also, we now know, understanding and documenting global warming and climate change. Some were sent to join other collections; others were sent to the landfill.

You can see this in the graph on the left, below, from the same BioScience paper mentioned at the top of this post.

In the 1980s, more than 30 herbaria -- repositories of plant and fungal specimens -- were added per year. Now that number is fewer than two per year. The authors comment that the numbers are similar for similar repositories of other kinds of life. The disappearance of specimen collections makes it harder to engage local communities and submit local specimens, although it can make accessing specimens easier for biologists (everyone loves one-stop shopping).

Another consequence is that the proportion of biology PhDs with degrees in natural history-related fields has slipped steadily for 50 years, as you can see from the graph on the right (b). The unmarked line represents all biology PhD.s, the line with the solid black dot is natural-history related disciplines. Microbiology and molecular biology are the squares, biophysics and neurology the triangles, and genetics is the gray circles. As David Wilcove and Thomas Eisner (my old professor and an esteemed naturalist-entomologist-chemical ecologist) wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2000, "A knowledge of, or even an avowed interest in, natural history is no longer a prerequisite for admission to a graduate program in ecology or any other branch of biology."

Further, exposure of students at all levels to natural history is diminishing. As we saw in the graph at the top of this post, all colleges and universities surveyed in the 1950s required at least some natural history courses for a biology degree - a median of 2.25. Today, most colleges have no natural history requirements for a biology degree, and the slim section devoted to natural history in the center of most textbooks has shrunk 40 percent and is usually skipped anyway, as I'm sure those of you with biology degrees earned in the last 20 years can attest.

As the classes vanished, so did the natural history training. Field trips and field classes disappeared, and without them, "these subjects are dead and the students who study them risk coming away with little but cold abstractions," wrote biologist Reed Noss in a paper mourning the demise of natural history in 1996. Most biology students no longer learned to identify species, and few learned about taxonomy or systematics, much less about the diversity of life within particular groups. The vast majority would work only with a few species in their studies, "becoming specialists before they are generalists," wrote mammalogist Michael Mares in 2002. "They are sublimely ignorant of the diversity and complexity of nature."

The ultimate consequence was that jobs for systematists and taxonomists likewise vaporized; observing and describing became passé; "natural history" and "naturalist" perjorative. Lab research brought "prestige, glamour, and grant money -- especially grant money", Pyle says. Natural history brought quiet ridicule, or at least condescension -- so much so that many young scientists would not even suggest they might be interested in organisms for their own sake. "All of us have met and heard students who, in explaining their work on some aspect of the biology of mammals, birds, or insects, say that they are not interested in mammals, birds, or insects as such but, instead, as models for studying principles," wrote David Schmidley in a 2005 commentary. "They do not view themselves as mammalogists or herpetologists but as ecologists or evolutionary biologists -- as if being a mammalogist were a badge of shame."
A Picture of a Slug Is Not a Slug
Anna Botsford Comstock reported that teachers even in her day lacked natural history training. But today, even if a child is lucky enough to get a teacher who has a biology degree, as we just saw, that is now no guarantee the teacher will know anything about nature or natural history. As we saw above, natural history is by and large no longer taught to biology majors, much less high school students.

Comstock's book stressed the importance of kid-on-critter time. But increasingly, in the classrooms and museum exhibits that I've seen or visited, still images or interactive games are considered adequate substitutes. They are not.

A better approach, one that Wilcove and Eisner suggest, is introducing kids to an older form of technology: microscopes. Even a simple stereo or dissecting microscope offers access to a fascinating universe of mites, springtails, and nematodes easily viewable in a bit of compost or soil, they say, and is a far more engaging experience than mindlessly flipping through photos in an exhibit or randomly pushing buttons.

Judging by a recent article in The Atlantic and by Richard Louv's 2008 book Last Child in the Woods, my wandering outside alone at a tender age was a common childhood experience a generation ago, but it has virtually disappeared today. Some parents never seem to let their kids out of their sight no matter how old they get -- they are constantly supervised and never allowed time to explore on their own.

Public schools are often no longer located close to nature, and field trips here too have gone the way of the dodo thanks to cost-cutting and liability, and over-supervised kids with helicopter parents and electronic babysitters rarely venture outside alone (even if they want to) to explore what nature is left in their suburban-sprawled backyard.

In schools, "environmental education" has often replaced natural history, with its emphasis on general structures and concepts like food webs or trophic levels. But such vague ideas are often boring and abstract. It would be hard to think of a kid or a biologist with a passionate devotion to a food web, but how many can you think of with a passion for a particular bird or dinosaur? But this kind of education -- and lack of exposure to life in the field -- produces kids for whom "every evergreen is a pine; all brown birds are sparrows; and if a spring chorus is to be heard at all, a frog is a frog is a frog," as Pyle writes. Actually, I bet you'd be hard pressed to find a kid today who knows sparrows are brown -- and many would not know it was a bird.

On a recent fishing trip to southeast Oklahoma, our guide related that he'd had a client who wanted to know what all the trees on the hill were that still had their leaves on in winter. In shock, my guide realized this man had no idea what a pine tree was. When the guide discovered the man worked in real estate, his interest was piqued. How could a real estate agent not know what a pine tree is? One that works in *commercial* real estate, apparently. On my old blog, I related the experience I had right out of college when I worked in a plant nursery and a man came in looking for an ostrich fern. As I sorted through the five or six fern species we had, he remarked "I never knew there were so many kinds of fern!" There are 10,000 species of fern.

When kids do not grow up around natural history, they become adults who are not only ignorant of natural history, but who do not care about nature and view it as disposable and unimportant. "Ecological ignorance breeds indifference," as Pyle put it. "What we know, we may choose to care for. What we fail to recognize, we certainly won't." Few reactions to climate change irritate me more than the "disposable Earth" attitude -- surprisingly common among young adults -- that if we ruin Earth (for our uses, at least), no biggie. We can just go terraform Mars or something (Not an exaggeration of this attitude. See prime example here, but I have heard it elsewhere too).

To that, I just want to shout "Are you insane??! Even if that were technically possible, have you seen what a good thing we've got going here? Have you SEEN Mars?" And I think a large part of this attitude stems from the fact many people -- especially young people -- have NOT seen what we've got going here. They haven't spent hours in the woods quietly rambling around, listening, smelling, tasting, and observing. They swum above a coral reef. They haven't experienced the grandeur of open grassland. They haven't walked through a fog-filled forest and seen the lichens and algae glow. They haven't seen the beauty of the desert in bloom. They haven't even looked at the magic in a drop of wild pond water under a microscope. Because guess who else hasn't done that yet? Me. And I even own a microscope.

To love Earth, you have to fall in love with Earth. And that can't happen indoors, eyes glued to a screen. You have to watch the bee gathering nectar from the blue bonnet; you have to smell and touch the sap (and discover it is now impossible to remove from your fingers) weeping from the tree; you have to smell the citrussy cinnamonny gym-socky aroma of the matsutake fresh from the pine duff.

What on Earth would possess anyone to suggest that it would be nothing to simply throw this all away and start again on a red, lifeless rock? Perhaps a childhood drained of natural history experience or education.
How Natural History and Sari Cloth Can Thwart Cholera
But natural history loss and apathy isn't just bad for academic naturalists and kids. In the same BioScience paper that produced the graphs in this post, lead author Joshua Tewksbury and colleagues point out that it can be bad -- and extremely costly -- for humanity in some very practical ways.

The waterborne illness cholera has killed millions over the centuries, famously killing some travelers on the Oregon Trail within hours of the first symptoms. What was not recognized or thought to be investigated until early 1990s was what cholera was up to in the environment when it wasn't killing humans. Cholera doesn't exist to afflict humans. It is a wild creature -- a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae -- which its own fascinating life history in nature. As it turns out cholera bacteria are actually native to the sea and commonly attach themselves to copepods and other zooplankton. Using this bit of natural history, scientists can now forecast cholera outbreaks in India using satellite images of phytoplankton blooms in the Indian Ocean.

What's more, it also led to the insight that filtering untreated water meant for drinking with tightly woven sari cloth vastly decreases the chances of getting cholera by removing the zooplankton that most of them are attached to, a very practical intervention that women in impoverished Indian households eager to improve their family's health can take.

" Washing Utensils And Vegetables" by Anwar Huq, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, Baltimore, Maryland, United States. The woman on the right is fitting a sari cloth filter to a water collecting jar. From Bradbury J: Beyond the Fire-Hazard Mentality of Medicine: The Ecology of Infectious Diseases. PLoS Biol 1/2/2003: e22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0000022. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

Sometimes our ignorance of natural history has caused us to directly act in ways that result in costly, difficult-to-undo mistakes. In the Pacific Northwest, 20th century water managers removed large logs and stumps from rivers to improve navigability and to "assist salmon migration". It was only after hundreds of streams were so cleared that officials realized that salmon actually *need* such large woody debris during their migration. Now we must spend millions to undo our damaging handiwork, sometimes going so far as to airlift logs into streams.

Perhaps the biggest and most costly natural-history related blunder of all in the United States was the policy of suppressing forest fire in the western United States. It was concocted based on strategies that worked well for wet forests in Germany and the eastern United States. But little thought was given to the natural history of dry western forests and how they might differ in their relationship to fire. As Native Americans had long known, western forests thrive on frequent small fires.

Now, 100 years of fire suppression in the west has led to over-dense forests susceptible to intense mega-blazes covering hundreds of square miles. As a result of our ignorance and arrogance, the US fire management program now costs more than $1 billion annually, and we must carefully coddle endangered species made so by the long fire drought.
What Can We Do?
There are three points I feel are important to make when considering the future of natural history.

1. Natural history is an important science worthy of respect and research dollars. The scientific method and natural history are not mutually exclusive. Wilcove and Eisner believe that the abandonment of natural history by universities will prove to be one of the biggest scientific mistakes of our time.

2. Just because biology moved on did not mean the work of natural history was over. Much still remains to do. It's honorable work and should be exciting -- the work of the Age of Discovery. Many scientists assume that all the important descriptive work has been done during that Age, but in reality, many species and groups of organisms were neglected during the 18th and 19th century, and those that were may have been described poorly or incorrectly. New biology graduate students have tended to enter popular fields without checking to see whether old fields needed further work. Many have been pushed into work on a handful of model organisms while work on other species and groups has languished. We have probably even lost ground in the last 50 years. When scientists from the previous era specializing in certain groups of organisms have died, so too has a tremendous amount of hard-earned institutional knowledge of particular groups. As a result of all these forces, even supposedly well-studied groups of animals (like jellyfish, as biologist Lisa-Anne Gershwin discussed with SA blogger Bec Crew) still have surprising gaps in our basic knowledge of their diversity. For more obscure groups, God only knows what's out there. We don't.

3. Natural history education -- and simply looking, observing and exploring nature -- are the birthright of all children and biologists. Failing to teach natural history and spend time in nature has serious practical consequences for individuals and for society.

So what can we do? The natural history and biodiversity gap is a major reason I started this blog five years ago to spotlight groups of organisms and aspects of natural history that I found fascinating but felt no one else wrote about. But my blog is a drop in the ocean.

I've had other ideas -- perhaps we could have microscope parties (safaris?) the way astronomers so effectively use star parties to lure the science curious public to their discipline. Or maybe Botany Cocktail Night. Or an Invertebrate Sushi Party (is that too disgusting?) The bounty of good field guides available today could be the inspiration for some other game or competitive activity (perhaps combined with exercise in some sort of competitive natural history photographic scavenger hunts?) that could teach people how to use them and instill a lifelong curiosity about nature. Perhaps 19th-century style Botany Walks will never again but popular, but if so, we need to find ways to connect people and real, live organisms in socially-inviting, engaging ways.

Schmidley suggests some good could come of ceasing to think of "naturalist" and "scientist" as mutually exclusive, "the supposition that one must be either an old-fashioned "-ologist" or a builder of conceptual frameworks, but not both". He suggests an alternative -- "the scientific naturalist." "a person with a deep and broad familiarity with one or more groups of organisms or ecological communities, who can draw on his or her knowledge of systematics, distribution, life histories, behavior, and perhaps physiology and morphology to inspire ideas, evaluate hypotheses, and intelligently design research with an awareness of organisms' special peculiarities." I have known a scientist or two like this, but we need more.

Maybe non-profit conservation or natural history organizations could endow chairs for "scientific naturalists" in biology departments with the stipulation that these positions go to those who study specific, understudied groups of organisms. Or perhaps they could create grants for work on understudied groups of organisms to inspire and fund all biologists who might not have otherwise have considered (or been able to consider) natural history a part of their research but would like to include it as part of their research portfolio. If anyone at NSF (or foreign equivalents) is reading this, I know you guys are scraping the bottom of the barrel right now with regard to research dollars, but could you spare a little more funding love for natural history work if and when your cup ever refills?

" Service intern Byron Hamstead helps identify stream insects (8026518273)" by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region - Service intern Byron Hamstead helps identify stream insects

Uploaded by AlbertHerring. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

I write this to everyone reading, but especially to my core audience of natural history lovers: it is up to us. Ask yourself: how can I share my passion for natural history with others? Who in my community is already doing this kind of thing? Could I teach a class through a college or local nature association? Give a public talk or talks? Take a class to further my education? Host a regular natural history salon/party in my house à la Ben Franklin and the Enlightenment scientists? Perhaps we could collectively relax a bit and let our children have more unstructured and unsupervised playtime in nature -- often the very same kind of wild free play we ourselves were afforded?

How could I get science curious friends who aren't already passionate about biology interested? Take my kids out for a nature walk -- and grab a few neighborhood kids while I'm at it? Get involved in volunteer outreach at my local natural history museum? Find the time to take *myself* for a walk in nature, field guide, magnifying glass, and binoculars in hand? I feel screen suck too ... but put down the phone and go outside.

If I'm a public school teacher, how can I incorporate more natural history -- and especially field trips and kid-on-critter (and not just vertebrates) time -- into my curriculum? If I'm a university faculty member, how can I increase or encourage the increase the teaching of natural history and field science and its requirement for a biology degree at my institution? Noss suggests that faculty and students donate time to schools parks, or other public agencies to help develop or improve educational programs in local natural history, and that lab or office-bound scientists get back out into the field themselves and make the effort to learn the organisms that live in their own backyards.

I know there are countless obstacles to all these ideas. But think about it.
A Final Plea for the Dignity of Natural History
In saying all this, I don't mean to impugn the role of theory and process, cell biology and genetics. Theory and process are essential. Biology hinges on evolutionary theory; it helps us understand everything we see. Natural history without appreciation of fundamental biology principles is simply an assortment of interesting facts. But theory and process are not, and cannot be everything.

Ernest Rutherford famously said "all science is either physics or stamp collecting". No science has perhaps been a bigger victim of this attitude than natural history. But is it a waste of time to visit and appreciate the paintings in the art museum? Is it stamp collecting to study and research the works of Vermeer, or Las Meninas?

How then can we have any less respect for the appreciation and study of natural works of art? We must have balance in biology between studying the process and the fascinating, oft-unexpected, and delightful products of those processes.

"A naturalist is the person who is inexhaustibly fascinated by biological diversity and who does not view organisms merely as models, or vehicles for theory, but rather as the thing itself that excites our admiration and our desire for knowledge, understanding, and preservation," writes David Schmidley. That is who I am. And I'm sure I'm not alone. But natural history will dwindle -- and humanity will suffer accordingly -- unless society prioritizes natural history research and education, and we who feel this way share our passion with others.

*******

"The current push to connect every classroom in America to the Internet demonstrates how quickly elected leaders and the public can be galvanized to address what is rightly perceived to be a critical educational need. Meanwhile, the demise of natural history goes unnoticed, increasing the likelihood that future generations of schoolchildren will spend even more time indoors, clicking away on their plastic mice, happily viewing images of the very plants and animals they could be finding in the woods, streams, and meadows they no longer visit." -- David Wilcove and Thomas Eisner, Chronicle of Higher Education, 2000

"Scientific abstractions and fancy technologies are no substitutes for the wisdom that springs from knowing the world and its creatures in intimate, loving detail. We owe it to ourselves and our students to keep opportunities for acquiring this kind of knowledge alive." --- Reed Noss, Conservation Biology, 2001

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that the paper by Tewksbury et al. was published in Current Biology. It was published in BioScience, and this post has been corrected accordingly.
References and Sources
Mares, M.A. 2002. A Desert Calling: Life in a Forbidding Landscape. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Noss, R.F. 1996. The Naturalists Are Dying Off, Conservation Biology 10: 1-3.

Pyle, R.M. 2001. The Rise and Fall of Natural History. Orion, Autumn 2001: 16-23.

Schmidley, D.J. 2005. What It Means To Be a Naturalist and the Future of Natural History at American Universities, Journal of Mammology 86: 449-456.

Tewksbury J.J., Anderson J.G.T., Bakker J.D., Billo T.J., Dunwiddie P.W., Groom M.J., Hampton S.E., Herman S.G., Levey D.J., Machnicki N.J., Martinez del Rio, C., Power, M.E., Rowell, K., Salomon, A.K., Stacey, L., Trombulak, S.C., & Wheeler, T.A. 2014. Natural History's Place in Science and Society, BioScience, DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biu032

Wilcove, D.S. and Eisner, T. 2000. The Impending Extinction of Natural History, Chronicle of Higher Education 47: B24.

The Courage to Live It Workshop begins late afternoon on August 24, 20104 and ends mid-day on August 27. A detailed schedule will be posted here ahead of time. Final program will be built around input from attendees.

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Natural History is Dying, and We Are All the Losers

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A few weeks ago, I came across a new paper in BioScience called "Natural History's Place in Science and Society" that contained the following graph. On the right axis and indicated by the line surrounded by dots is the proportion of introductory biology texts devoted to natural history since 1935.

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Where can we find standards for teaching Zoology? - Mr. Crockett's Classes

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Where can we find standards for teaching Zoology? - Mr. Crockett's Classes

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How many people would expect that there are over 220 species of snails native to Arizona, a landlocked state whose climate is primarily a desert, staking partial claim to all four deserts of North America? Probably few outside nature enthusiasts in the Southwest. But how many people have heard of Gregor Mendel's experiments with pea plants? Probably most of the adults in the United States with a high school education, despite the fact that he was an unknown Austrian monk who lived in the nineteenth century. Why?

As I he North Carolina Essential Standards (NCES) for Biology do a poor job of connecting characteristics of living organisms as a whole with the specific organisms in our students' local ecosystems. That is not to say our Biology standards are without achievement. Complementing the fact that North Carolina is home to the ever-growing biotechnological industries in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina's genetics standards rank among the top seven states nationally as assessed by the already mentioned, Zoology is found nowhere in the current standards adopted by North Carolina, and t American Society of Human Genetics, even higher than the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Although the vast majority of students will not be employed within the biotechnology sector, the role of genetics in the lives of individuals, particularly when it comes to healthcare, is difficult to question, and for this reason--among others--the Biology standards have shifted away from organismal biology to cellular and molecular biology.

The phrase "major phyla" typically refers to the nine phyla within the animal kingdom containing the greatest numbers of extant species, which are often organized in a cladogram such as this to show their evolutionary relationships.

The vestiges of studying animal diversity are now embedded within a study of advantageous evolutionary adaptations, whereas in older standards the study of animal diversity was distinguished from the study of adaptations and behavior. The 1999 NC Standard Course of Study (NCSCOS) included as one of its five main goals "an understanding of the unity and diversity of life," and the clarifying objectives explicitly invoke a study of zoology, including the "form and function of... organ systems of animals" and the comparison of "major phyla." By the 2004 NCSCOS, the breadth of this diversity had been narrowed to four representative groups of organisms (annelids, insects, amphibians, and mammals), and the depth had been limited to a handful of named body systems (transport, excretion, respiration, regulation, nutrition, synthesis, reproduction, and growth and development). Now with the current standards, shown above, this language has been reduced to even fewer systems, falling under the umbrella of structural adaptations, with no specific animal clades identified.

Time is a limiting reagent when planning a course, so it would be unwise to argue that an expansive study of animal diversity should be added back to the Biology curriculum in addition to all of the other standards. In my experience, the current curriculum is already too expansive to do due justice to all standards in one semester, and adding any additional content would further exacerbate this issue. Also, as strong as our genetics standards seem to be, and as valuable as they are, we should not risk weakening them. Instead, I am satisfied to teach an elective course in Zoology which can pick up the slack left by Biology for those students with a particular interest in animals. Indeed, the same can be said for Human Anatomy and Physiology, which many high schools also regularly offer as an elective course for interested students, not only to enhance the education of future healthcare practitioners, but to also pick up the slack from the Biology standards, which make no attempt to include a comprehensive study of human body systems, let alone the body systems of any other animal.

Currently in North Carolina, the state does not develop standards for science electives, as it does for other disciplines like social studies, where standards exist for diverse electives like Latin American Studies and Twentieth Century Civil Liberties and Civil Rights. Therefore if a school in North Carolina is to offer a science elective, all curricular decisions are made at the local level. This is common among other states; even though all fifty states have a set of standards for a required course in Biology or Life Science, only five states have standards specifically for a Zoology elective, including Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, and Mississippi.

One factor which I believe contributes to the scarcity of state Zoology standards has been the movement toward national science standards, beginning in 1989 with the publication of Science for All Americans and continuing to 2013, when twenty-six partner states completed the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). These standards divide science content along traditional disciplinary distinctions, into the Physical Sciences, the Life Sciences, and the Earth and Space Sciences, perhaps initially to reflect common academic and professional boundaries. Now, these distinctions also reflect the common graduation requirement to complete at least one course from each of these disciplines. Such national standards were upheld by advocates who fought for the inclusion of Earth Science among graduation requirements in states at the turn of the millennium, which North Carolina became the first state to accomplish in 2000.

Prior to this modification, the graduation requirements in North Carolina had been "Biology, Chemistry, and Physics (or in lieu of Physics, one other advanced science course)" at least since the 1985 Competency-Based Curriculum, but most likely even earlier. At the time of the change, vocal parents complained that creating an additional requirement for Earth Science "would make it harder for students to take Advanced Placement classes." Instead, the requirement for Chemistry and Physics was reduced to one course in the Physical Sciences, and students would soon be able to fulfill their Earth Science requirement with the newly-introduced and soon-popularized AP Environmental Science since 1998. Indeed, this shift in the curriculum likely reduced enrollments in Physics and other science electives (like Zoology and Anatomy) across the state more than anything else as upper-level students would take Chemistry to fulfill their graduation requirement and then continue to opt exclusively for Advanced Placement courses, as opposed to other honors-level or unweighted electives. Now roughly only an eighth of the students who take Chemistry where I teach also choose to take Physics. North Carolina does still maintain a set of standards for Physics, since it is a fundamental science offered at most high schools, but nationally the attention has been given to the core graduation requirements and Advanced Placement courses.

In an attempt to create a Zoology curriculum in the absence of any state models, I would set for myself the task of sifting through the available standards for Biology, such as the North Carolina Essential Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards, and I would first look for any standards that explicitly call for a study of animal diversity and physiology. Unfortunately just as I have shown animal diversity and physiology being filtered from the NCES for Biology, these topics are also absent from the NGSS, which Professor John Schrock has decried. He argues that if students "know nothing about the life of plants, animals and microbes [organismal biology]," then the study of ecology and evolution is meaningless "because it is animals, plants and microbes that have ecological relationships and evolve." Therefore not only have the national standards drawn attention away from a diversity of science course offerings in favor of establishing common knowledge across the sciences, but they have also precluded Zoology from its Life Science standards. As a secondary alternative, I would compile any standards that would be implicit in the study of Zoology, such as those related to the classification, evolution, and ecology of organisms, and these would be the general life science standards that would lend themselves easily to becoming the underlying and unifying strands for a Zoology course. Luckily one can avoid this duplication of effort because Kansas--one of the lead state partners for NGSS-- formed their Zoology standards by doing just that; they relating the generalized Life Science Disciplinary Core Ideas from the NGSS to specific animal phyla, which students follow throughout the course.

This all begs the question: why should we care whether there are state or national standards for Zoology? Even though standards make curriculum development easier by providing a backbone for the content and skills taught during a course, they can also constrict the scope and pacing for a course. Standards can provide gravitas and validation to a course, ensuring all stakeholders that the course is rooted in some kind of authority, but they are certainly not necessary for a teacher to create a challenging, innovative, and worthwhile course for students. Even in the absence of mandated standards, a teacher still has goals and objectives implicit in every lesson and assignment they make. Ultimately, teaching predates standards, so what is the value in arguing for them?

The NGSS are written in such a way that all students by each checkpoint--grades 2, 5, 8, and 12--will share a common, progressively deeper and more thorough scientific literacy. Any topic excluded from the standards may still be important, but its exclusion differentiates it as nonessential to be a scientifically literate citizen. Most citizens would likely answer "no" if asked whether all students should know what a mollusk is before they graduate from high school. I did not know what a mollusk was when I graduated high school, and I still did not know when I graduated from college with a degree in Biology. Were I not a science teacher trying to improve the science education I provide my students, I might still not know what characterizes a mollusk. I would not know that snails are classified in the same phylum as squids, and I would never be able to predict that hundreds of snail species are native to Arizona. This is all partly due to my lack of personal experience with both snails and Arizona, but it is also due to the fact that I am an intellectual product of North Carolina's curriculum in the 1990s and 2000s.

Survey sets of preserved animals are products sold by most science supply companies like Carolina Biological. These sets can be used for teaching the general principles of life like classification, evolution, or adaptations, but they would are exceptional for studying animal diversity and physiology in their own right. I plan to make use of both for observation and dissection this year.

One possible reason animal diversity and organismal biology as a whole are excluded from the standards is because the appearance of specific organisms can change radically from ecosystem-to-ecosystem, especially across a continent as vast as North America, and perhaps not all students in the United States need to understand mollusks to understand their local ecosystem. It is difficult to argue for a set of generalized standards which prescribe the teaching of specific organisms, or groups of organisms. It is easier to argue that all students by the end of twelfth grade should understand that a change in acceleration is caused by an unbalanced force since that can be experienced universally. However, if we move outside of the realm of science curricula, it is much more typical for students in other subject areas to learn about the world beyond their locale. Students are exposed to the literatures, cultures, and histories of people and areas they may never personally encounter. Perhaps it is a problem in science education that in an effort to explain the natural world our national and state standards are too focused on universality rather than on diversity.

A similar conflict between the universal and the individual found in medical education was addressed by Jerry Vannatta, a professor of medicine at the University of Oklahoma, who noticed that medical students cultivate more empathy for patients after they meet and have dinner with the families of their Gross Anatomy cadavers. It is more stereotypical for medical students and doctors to become preoccupied with the science, or the universality, of medicine instead of the specific personalities and lives of the diverse patients they are treating. In high school science, i f it is important that all students know that mitosis is the process of cell division by which multicellular organisms can grow and heal, but not that Pioneer, a Golden Eagle at the Carolina Raptor Center, used mitosis to heal over a gunshot wound to her eye, then there is a problem with science education. If the current standards overlook diversity and empathy, then hopefully Zoology can fix that.

It is obvious that I already have created standards, or something like them, in my mind that I hope to meet through this first round of teaching Zoology, and I also find Kansas's set of Zoology standards insightful and useful. I will share some of these with my students as well move through the semester, but what might prove more telling would be the responses to one of the final summative assessments I will give for the course. Students will write their own standards for the course that they would use if they were to teach it themselves. If I design the assignment well enough, it will allow them a chance to reflect on what they learned and identify what they think are important knowledge and skills a Zoology student should obtain from the course. It will also give me 30+ more perspectives on what Zoology education should look like, informing my teaching for future semesters, and amending what I perceive to be a grievous oversight in the current standards.

The Santa Rita talussnail, a common mollusk seen in Arizona. Photo by WestLands Resources Inc.

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Where can we find standards for teaching Zoology?

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How many people would expect that there are over 220 species of snails native to Arizona, a landlocked state whose climate is primarily a desert, staking partial claim to all four deserts of North America? Probably few outside nature enthusiasts in the Southwest. But how many people have heard of Gregor Mendel's experiments with pea plants?

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Before we get into the following learning units, which will provide more detailed discussion of topics on different human body systems, it is necessary to learn some useful terms for describing body structure. Knowing these terms will make it much easier for us to understand the content of the following learning units. Three groups of terms are introduced here:

Directional Terms

Directional terms describe the positions of structures relative to other structures or locations in the body.

Superior or cranial - toward the head end of the body; upper (example, the hand is part of the superior extremity).

Inferior or caudal - away from the head; lower (example, the foot is part of the inferior extremity).

Anterior or ventral - front (example, the kneecap is located on the anterior side of the leg).

Posterior or dorsal - back (example, the shoulder blades are located on the posterior side of the body).

Medial - toward the midline of the body (example, the middle toe is located at the medial side of the foot).

Lateral - away from the midline of the body (example, the little toe is located at the lateral side of the foot).

Proximal - toward or nearest the trunk or the point of origin of a part (example, the proximal end of the femur joins with the pelvic bone).

Distal - away from or farthest from the trunk or the point or origin of a part (example, the hand is located at the distal end of the forearm).

Planes of the Body

Coronal Plane (Frontal Plane) - A vertical plane running from side to side; divides the body or any of its parts into anterior and posterior portions.

Sagittal Plane (Lateral Plane) - A vertical plane running from front to back; divides the body or any of its parts into right and left sides.

Axial Plane (Transverse Plane) - A horizontal plane; divides the body or any of its parts into upper and lower parts.

Median plane - Sagittal plane through the midline of the body; divides the body or any of its parts into right and left halves.

Body Cavities

The cavities, or spaces, of the body contain the internal organs, or viscera. The two main cavities are called the ventral and dorsal cavities. The ventral is the larger cavity and is subdivided into two parts (thoracic and abdominopelvic cavities) by the diaphragm, a dome-shaped respiratory muscle.

Thoracic cavity

The upper ventral, thoracic, or chest cavity contains the heart, lungs, trachea, esophagus, large blood vessels, and nerves. The thoracic cavity is bound laterally by the ribs (covered by costal pleura) and the diaphragm caudally (covered by diaphragmatic pleura).

Abdominal and pelvic cavity

The lower part of the ventral (abdominopelvic) cavity can be further divided into two portions: abdominal portion and pelvic portion. The abdominal cavity contains most of the gastrointestinal tract as well as the kidneys and adrenal glands. The abdominal cavity is bound cranially by the diaphragm, laterally by the body wall, and caudally by the pelvic cavity. The pelvic cavity contains most of the urogenital system as well as the rectum. The pelvic cavity is bounded cranially by the abdominal cavity, dorsally by the sacrum, and laterally by the pelvis.

Dorsal cavity

The smaller of the two main cavities is called the dorsal cavity. As its name implies, it contains organs lying more posterior in the body. The dorsal cavity, again, can be divided into two portions. The upper portion, or the cranial cavity, houses the brain, and the lower portion, or vertebral canal houses the spinal cord.

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Before we get into the following learning units, which will provide more detailed discussion of topics on different human body systems, it is necessary to learn some useful terms for describing body structure. Knowing these terms will make it much easier for us to understand the content of the following learning units.

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Science Lesson Plans for the Classroom | California Academy of Sciences

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Science Lesson Plans for the Classroom | California Academy of Sciences

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Anoushka Takla's fourth graders seek to answer the question: "What happens to our trash over time?"

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Science lesson plans for elementary, middle, and high school classrooms teaching life, earth, and physical sciences: activities for kids and students!

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Biology Teaching & Learning Resources. Educational articles, drawings, experiments & PowerPoint presentations by D G Mackean

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Biology Teaching & Learning Resources. Educational articles, drawings, experiments & PowerPoint presentations by D G Mackean

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Biology Teaching Resources for Students and Teachers

Presentations, Experiments, Questions, and Answers

Seven PowerPoint Presentations to introduce the basic concepts for an understanding of the underlying principles of Biology. Each presentation contains between 15 and 38 slides with a set of multiple choice questions.

Ten PowerPoint Presentations to introduce the basic concepts for an understanding of the underlying principles of Genetics. Each presentation contains between 15 and 38 slides with a set of multiple choice questions.

One hundred and eighteen tried and tested experiments. Detailed instructions are provided, together with a complete list of apparatus, materials and reagents needed, and a set of questions to help the student interpret the results and criticise the experimental design.

Short answer questions for testing GCSE and IGCSE Biology, with answers; exercises and discussion questions without answers, plus a series of interactive multiple-choice questions with answers and explanations.

Answers to the 'in-text' questions which occur in IGCSE Biology (2nd edition) and GCSE Biology (3rd edition) by D. G. Mackean

Plants, Animals, and Fungi

Drawings and notes on a selection of plants, animals and fungi; their structures and life cycles.

Plants

(Background article: Seed Structure).

(Background article: Vegetative Reproduction).

Animals

(Background articles: Amoeba, Paramecium, Spirogyra, Chlamydomonas, Euglena, Parasitic Protozoa).

(Background article: insect structure and function).

(Background article: Citrus Swallowtail Butterfly).

(Background article: Fish: Structure and Function).

(Background article: Tilapia, an Introduction).

(Background article: The frog, an Introduction).

(Background article: Birds, an Introduction).

Fungi

(Background article: Fungi, an Introduction).

Teeth and Dentition

Other Resources

A selection of video clips illustrating topics covered on this site, including birds, insects, plants, and protista.

Index of articles, teaching notes and illustrations.

Useful links to other internet resources relating to the topics on this site.

Browse books on biology and other sciences.

Contact and Copyright

All the material on this web site is the copyright of D.G. Mackean. If copies are made for use in schools or colleges, or for individual use, no permission is necessary. For copies used for publication elsewhere, permission should be sought from IanMackean@hotmail.com Please also use this email address for any other enquiries about the site.

© Copyright 2004 - 2019 D G Mackean & Ian Mackean. All rights reserved.

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Biology Teaching & Learning Resources. Educational articles, drawings, experiments & PowerPoint presentations by D G Mackean

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Seven PowerPoint Presentations to introduce the basic concepts for an understanding of the underlying principles of Biology. Each presentation contains between 15 and 38 slides with a set of multiple choice questions. Ten PowerPoint Presentations to introduce the basic concepts for an understanding of the underlying principles of Genetics.

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Watch meerkats engage in a fiercely adorable war dance | Popular Science

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Watch meerkats engage in a fiercely adorable war dance | Popular Science

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Watch meerkats engage in a fiercely adorable war dance

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If you were a meerkat, this photo would be terrifying. Sure, those itsy bitsy paws are adorable to us. But this is serious business to a meerkat-this is a war dance.

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AAZK's purpose is to foster a professional attitude in animal keepers and aquarists by encouraging them to become active members of professional teams at today's zoos and aquariums. AAZK supports the promotion and implementation of zookeeper education and...

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Columbus Zoo and Aquarium - Reservations - Educator Resources

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Columbus Zoo and Aquarium - Reservations - Educator Resources

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Visit Stingray Bay and pet these amazing animals!

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Welcome to Marine Biology 2018 - 2019 Shark Dissection powerpoint Phylum Echinodermata Chondrichthyes info Marine Life ocean zone 1 Porifera phylum info Cnidarian Diversity
Please fill out this link for the aquarium field trip permission slip:
https://forms.gle/vYcEPNAX3Nma83YJ6
4/15/2019- Vocab words - must be turned in today- the 15th. Define the following: echinoderm pentamerous aboral ossicle gamglia hemolymph water-vascular system tube foot (podia) test pedicellaria madreporite stone canal ring canal radial canal ampulla cardiac stomach esophagus ambulacral groove bipinnaria ophiuridea asteroidea echinoidea holothuroidea
COME CHECK OUT YOUR TANK!! WEDNESDAY March 27th- 8:30 - 10:30 am Only ~1 hour left!! What's up??? I am here all my lonesome! Weird! (time now 9:24) TEXT ME AT 303-949-6228 Come to the back door
3/21/2019-

Be sure to define the following: Cnidaria Mesoglea Gastrodermis Epidermis Planula Tentacles Hydrostatic skeleton Cnidocyte Nematocyst Gastrovascular cavity Polyp Medusa Cnidocil

3/18/2019- take notes on this powerpoint - then Design a Cnidarian
This Design Project won't be due till Friday. Draw your organism on a blank sheet of paper.

Cnidarian Slide Presentation: Create a Google Slide presentation that highlights a particular species of Cnidarian. Be sure to have it be a very visual presentation. Include the following: Classification (all levels of classification down to species and genus), physical characteristics, geographical area, life style and life cycle,
toxins, and interactions with mankind.

YEAH!! We have a deal!!! Unfortunately my knees have taken a HUGE beating the last few days and I will not be there all day- BUT I will go in and feed the fish!!! Anyone wanting to come in and feed with me I will be there about 8:00!! Love you!!

Honors Paper is extended to be due on March 1 @ Midnight.
2/4/2019- Today you will start your research on an environmental issue that is harming the World's Oceans. You will need to research the cause, who is involved in it getting to proportions that are harming the Oceans (usually the problems start small), how is it specifically affecting the biodiversity, animals, food, lifestyle, reproduction or well being of the animals. Lastly, what efforts are being taken to combat, solve or diminish this problem, or the effects of this problem. If you are Honor's this will be a 5 - 6 page paper,, and a 2 -3 page paper if you are non-honors.
ok!!!! Here we go!!! You guys can do it!! I believe in you!!
There is frozen brine in the freezer. Use freshwater for the frozen brine and put 10 or 11 cubes in the water.

Yes there is some live brine as well. But I think people should take some directly out of the tank if they need it. Not every tank will need live brine.

Feed your fish well!! They won't have an afternoon snack!

There is a small bag of shark food that was cut by tank three last week. Tank 19 needs to cut shark food as well. Put a little bit of the food in a small amount of fresh water in a pitcher.

I know that you are almost out of room on your feeding sheets, so I printed some more that are still sitting on the printer in my pod.

I need someone to take a clear picture of each of the feeding sheets before taking them down. You can text them to my school phone.

Don't forget to look after your neighbors fish tank and make sure everybody is fed, including my own babies!! (They like Frozen and live).

If somebody could come to my room at the end of the day and make sure that the lights are all off including the lights in my back room that would be great! And also make sure that every single tank is plugged in and running.

Good luck! If you need anything contact my school cell phone 303-396-9701.

2/4/2019- Today you will start your research on an environmental issue that is harming the World's Oceans. You will need to research the cause, who is involved in it getting to proportions that are harming the Oceans (usually the problems start small), how is it specifically affecting the biodiversity, animals, food, lifestyle, reproduction or well being of the animals. Lastly, what efforts are being taken to combat, solve or diminish this problem, or the effects of this problem. If you are Honor's this will be a 5 - 6 page paper,, and a 2 -3 page paper if you are non-honors. This won't be due for 2 weeks.

2/1/2019- To help with studying for vocab test- animal body plan power point
Quiz is on Monday?Tuesday Feb 4/5

CHECK ON YOUR FISH AND YOUR TANK Thursday THE 27th 8:30- 11:30 AM.
TEXT ME AT 303-396-9701 TO GET LET IN THE BACK DOOR (NOT THE FRONT)
Tank Test Graphs You must make a copy of the graph.
1/24/2019- Link to SUP Article
SUP Facts
Final study guides:: 12/11/2018- Marine Life ocean zone Marine Mammals for website
11/16/2018- Using the level of the ocean that you chose in class create an imaginary fish that has 8 necessary traits that help them adapt to that particular level of the ocean. Traits can be simple like the shape of their body, or complex like an added fin on the fish.

The fish needs to be in color. It can be drawn, or traced, etc. It must be just 1/2 page big. On the back create a key that explain the traits that you gave the fish, and how they help them adapt to their ocean zone.
These are due next class period. If you did not choose an ocean (i think there are 2 people) then find the ocean zones and choose one yourself.

10/10/2018- If you still have work that needs to be graded bring it to class and place it in my sink that is on my front desk. If you have missing work it is your responsibility to look through the outbox for your paper, or to get missing worksheets off my desk. I am available before school, during lunch, and after school to help you.

NO WORK WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER 6:00 pm on Friday. Feel free to email me, or text me.

10/9/2018- All work is due to Ms. Brown by tonight.

Marine Biology 2018-2019 Supply List:
HONORS STUDENTS: TURNITIN.COM CODES WILL BE GENERATED TODAY.
IF YOU SENT ME YOUR PAPER PLEASE SUBMIT IT TO TURNITIN AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. IF YOU DID NOT SUBMIT A PAPER PLEASE SUBMIT IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Don't worry about late points, none will be deducted
9/24-25/2018- Students will complete the Ocean Depths worksheet given to them http://mjksciteachingideas.com/pdf/MappingHigher.pdf
Then students will create a map sketch that will include a visual depiction of the Ocean Floor Terms . Use the map given to you to do this. Define the terms (not the terms that are a geographical location) given to you on a separate piece of paper.

9/19/2018- Students need to finish the notes on Marine Mammals. If they are done, then they can study them; test will include all traits of Cetacea and each suborder, as well as the Families that are listed in the powerpoint. Student whale papers due dates are coming up. Be sure you have a thesis, introductory paragraph, etc. Look at my specific instructions below for the paper requirements. There are a lot of students in Shrek. They really need to use this time. Please don't forget you have a presentation and a paper due.

9/17/2018- If you were having trouble opening these links- try again now. Marine Mammals 1
Marine Mammals 2

Watch both of these videos and take notes on them. You will have a test on everything in these videos. You have papers due in the near future. Use your time this week to take notes on these 2 videos that I made, and also watch the "Whales Marine Biology" on my youtube (Victoria Brown). You need to be self-motivated and keep yourself on track this week. Expect a test on Whales mid week next week. No notes can be used. You need to know all the classification, and all the whale Families. Please be sure to read my requirements for your whale papers. Your presentations can be due on Sept. 26th.

Whale papers: If you are Non-Honors then your paper is due to Turnitin.com by Friday September 21st, at midnight. See the codes for Turnitin below. Those who are in Honors your paper is due on Turnitin.com on Monday September 24th. There are no extensions for Honors. See the Turnitin codes below. If it is close to midnight and you can't submit, then, and only then, can you send it to my email. I will then submit it to Turnitin for you.

Turnitin.com Codes: These are case sensitive.

9/14/2018- Today is a stripe day, and I know that with a loss in our DSA family it has been a tough week. Please take today to take care of yourself, and finish any work for my class, or any other class. I will update this website with any pertinent information and deadlines as we move forward. Try to use your time to best help yourself. I will see you as soon as I am healthy. Miss you terribly.
- WHALE PAPERS ARE NOT DUE TILL LATER-
Periods 1, 5, THIS IS MARINE BIOLOGY-- Can use Cart D which I have reserved for them, to work on a research paper on a whale of their choosing. Due date is next week, undetermined yet. Those that have chosen non-honors will write a 2 page paper, and make a visual powerpoint or google slide about a whale of their choice. Those that are choosing Honors for this semester will write a 5-6 page research paper along with a powerpoint or google slide presentation that is visual, with facts. The assignment is below READ THIS TO THE CLASS. There needs to be 2 lists of chosen whales, includes all dolphins as well on the board. One list for non honors, and one list for honors. No one can choose the same whale within the same list.

Your paper should include the following: A short description of the whale species and how it interacts with its environment. The description should include specific behaviors, its anatomical structures, how it has adapted to its environment, migrations, mating, and any other pertinent behaviors, or traits. The majority of the paper needs to document the interaction of the species with mankind. What have been possible solutions to the negative impact? What is the long term outlook for the species?

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, or 2 pages for non honors (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper, or 2 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the effect that the invasive species has had on the ecosystem. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. . Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.

Periods 1, 5, THIS IS MARINE BIOLOGY-- Can use Cart D which I have reserved for them, to work on a research paper on a whale of their choosing. Due date is next week, undetermined yet. Those that have chosen non-honors will write a 2 page paper, and make a visual powerpoint or google slide about a whale of their choice. Those that are choosing Honors for this semester will write a 5-6 page research paper along with a powerpoint or google slide presentation that is visual, with facts. The assignment is below READ THIS TO THE CLASS. There needs to be 2 lists of chosen whales, includes all dolphins as well on the board. One list for non honors, and one list for honors. No one can choose the same whale within the same list.

Your paper should include the following: A short description of the whale species and how it interacts with its environment. The description should include specific behaviors, its anatomical structures, how it has adapted to its environment, migrations, mating, and any other pertinent behaviors, or traits. The majority of the paper needs to document the interaction of the species with mankind. What have been possible solutions to the negative impact? What is the long term outlook for the species?

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, or 2 pages for non honors (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper, or 2 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the effect that the invasive species has had on the ecosystem. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.

Students must have the following by August 31st.

Any type of notebook that has lined paper and can hold handouts.

Pens and/or pencils (which ever you are most comfortable with, but no red ink, or neon color.)

1 hand towel to be used for cleaning up water spills. (thrift store towels are fine) You will spill a lot!

I have students each bring 1 item to class to be used by the community. For example, one child may bring paper towels, but they will also be able to use anything anyone else brought to class such as Kleenex, tape, glue, scissors, Clorox wipes etc. If there is an issue with not being able to bring an item please email me or call me or just send a note with your student, I can work with you. Please don't buy a pitcher before coming to the first day of class.

1 new packaged unused turkey baster (to feed the fish with) (last name A - B)
1 new unused pitcher (must be clear, plastic, no pour spout, ½ or 1 gal. size.) (see class demonstration) (last name C - H) Please don't buy this before the first day of class
1 pair of scissors (not the very small elementary type) (last name I - S)
1 box of Nitrile gloves for dissecting square box of 40-50 ( last name T - Z)

I can't accept vinyl gloves- they do not stretch and are very hard to dissect with. If your student has a latex allergy Nitrile gloves will work for them) We will use a lot of gloves during the year! (look in pharmacy area of Walmart or King Soopers, Walgreens, etc.
Marine Biology Syllabus 2017
All work due to Ms. Brown by Wednesday. Not accepted after 3:00 pm.

Answer the question that are embedded in this Shark Dissection all 3 days

5/10/2017- Aquarium Field Trip Alternative assignment. Due by May 21st.

4/30/2018- No need for Echinodermata notes- We will do them in class.

3/21/2018- Clam Questions: (can be hand written, or emailed to me.

1. How were you able to get into the clam body? Explain what you did. What muscles open & close the clam?

2. Describe what you saw after opening the clam.

3. Describe the inside lining of the shell.

4. What were the prominent parts you could see upon it opening?

5. How do bivalves move?

6. Why are they called bivalves?

7. Is their digestive tract complete or incomplete? Explain your answer.

8. Do bivalves show cephalization? Explain your answer.

9. What are siphons & what is their purpose?

10. Describe the visceral mass and where it could be found inside the shell.

11. Is circulation open or closed? Describe the heart you saw.

12. What is the oldest part of a clam's shell called and how can it be located?

13. How do clams breathe?

14. Where are the Labial palps found and what is their function?

3/20/2018-

2nd Honor's Paper: Due May 12th by Midnight No late papers will be accepted.
Topics listed below:
Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.

If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, come see me and I will help you register.

Topic: Choose one species of Shark, and research all aspects of the shark's anatomy, physiology, behavior, reproduction, and niche. Create a comprehensive profile of the species you have chosen. You do not need to review 'traits of all sharks'. I am your audience, and already know the traits of Chondroicthyes.

Turnitin Codes:
Marine Biology Honors period 1
Class ID: 16570059
Password: marine1
Marine Biology Honors period 4
Class ID: 16570047
Password: marine4
Marine Biology Honors period 5
Class ID:16570054
Password: marine5

If you are having problems text or call me!! No matter how late in the evening. No late papers accepted.

Honor's Paper: Due April 14th by Midnight. No late papers will be accepted. Your topic is sustainability research on a particular species of marine animal, or sustainability of a particular area, coastal city, or country. Refer to the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals Section 14. Oceans and Seas United Nations Knowledge Platform
Sustainability in Oceans Goal #14

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the effect that the invasive species has had on the ecosystem. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.

If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, come see me and I will help you register.

Non- Honors Mollusca Animal Profile Choose a teacher approved organism that is in Phylum Mollusca, and in Gastropoda, Bivalve, or Cephalopoda . Create a digital profile that highlights your chosen organism, where it lives, it's specific anatomy, what it eats, defense mechanisms, reproduction, digestion, etc. It will be presented to the class after break. Please make it very visual- no paragraphs, simple captions are fine. You may have notes with you if needed. Due April 3rd.

3/7/2018- Cnidarian Classes Powerpoint

Due on Wednesday/Thursday 14/15th (unless you are on the Orchestra field trip- then you have more time)

Design the perfect Cnidarian!

Choose a Class of Cnidarian and then do a random draw for an environment

Create a Cnidarian that would thrive in your newly acquired environment.

You must include the following:

New adaptations for your Cnidarian to the environment

Anatomically correct labeled specimen

Show adaptive reproduction cycle that follows Class cycle

How it conserves energy

How it either floats in water, is mobile in the water, or can locate an advantageous place to live

Senses for the environment

Adaptations of Cnidocytes

Strategies to obtain food

Create an Order, Family Genus and Species. Note specific traits for species. Choose an Order that already exists or make up one of your own. Note the traits.

Digestion of food

Defense mechanisms

Present time with new adaptations or 500 years in the future

Need explanations of each adaptation or trait (attached or in a separate document)

Need drawings that are traced or hand drawn

2/9/2018- Sponge quiz, and students are handed back their Whale test. If you have 90% or higher then there is no need to make up points. Test is worth is 65 points.
To make up points on the test you can correct any questions that you missed. I will give a third of a point for any corrected question. If you did not get back your test yet, you will in the next class.

2/6/2018- Quiz on Sponges on Friday Porifera vocab
Porifera powerpoint

1/24/2018- Test on Friday that will include all vocab and all information in this Marine Mammal powerpoint

1/17/2018- Watched Blackfish. Vocab test will be next striped Friday- the 26th. Whale Vocab

1/15/2018- We will be watching BlackFish on Tuesday/Wednesday so that we can gather some creative ideas on how to display our Whale information for the building. Please come with some ideas!! You need the following info for the Whale species that you drew:
Info: Body dimensions, including averages, and greatest organisms measured. Mass, flipper length, dorsal fin placement and length, shape of head, tail fluke measurement and specific shape. Look for some indication of girth, width or general torso measurement. Please come with a pre-prepared hand written sheet or set of notes on your phone. You may not just look this up at the beginning of class.

Midterm Review:
vocab Osmocomforter, Salinity, Hypotonic, Solvent, Solute, Solution, Catadromous, Halophile, Plasmolysis, Anadromous, PPT, Ion, Isotonic, Osmoregulator, Euryhaline, Stenohaline

Nitrogen Cycle:

Also know the classification of the fish, and traits of the Class Osteichthyes
Ocean Zone Powerpoint
Also be able to identify traits that fish might have in the different zones. Epipelagic, Mesopelagic, Bathylpelagic, Abyssalpelagic, Hadalpelagic.

12/4/2017- Honors Paper Due Dec. 15th midnight - Marine Biology Honors Paper Impact on ocean lif

Non-Honors Paper Due Dec. 12th by midnight Marine Biology non-Honors fish families

Turnitin Codes:
Marine Biology Honors period 1
Class ID: 16570059
Password: marine1
Marine Biology Honors period 4
Class ID: 16570047
Password: marine4
Marine Biology Honors period 5
Class ID:16570054
Password: marine5
Marine Biology Non-Honors period 1
Class ID: 16953948
Password: marinenon1
Marine Biology Non-Honors period 4
Class ID: 16953960
Password: marinenon4
Marine Biology Non-Honors period 5
Class ID: 16953966
Password: marinenon5

11/27/17- FIX TANKS! Answer dissection questions: (due today for those who participated in the dissection)

Fish Dissection Day 2
1. Compare and contrast the fish liver with the human liver. What would the fish be using the liver for compared to what we use our liver for?

2. Describe the gills and using formfitting function why do they have the shape that they do? Would gills look different for a top water fish versus a deep water fish? Why or why not?

3. Describe the inner texture of the stomach. How does that texture affect digestion for the fish and what benefits might it have for them. Remember to think what form of the fish eat their food in.

4. Describe the intestines and the length compared to humans. What my account for the differences between fish and human intestines?

5. Describe the hearts of the fish. How is it different and similar to humans? Why might the fish not need a heart as large as the humans?

6. Describe the protective nature of the covering of the brain. How is it different from humans or similar? How is the brain different from humans? Why or why not with the perch need a brain different from humans?
Fish Dissection Questions Day 1

1. Describe the coloring of the fish. Are the scales the same size and shape all over the body?

2. Describe the mouth, the jaw, teeth, tongue, and lips if any.

3. Which fins are paired, and which are not paired?

4. Describe the operculum. What is it's purpose?

5. Where can the food/water go after entering the mouth. Trace the two paths in a sketch.

6. Compare the human eyes to the fish eyes. What are the similarities and differences, in the structure of the eyes, and the placement? How does form fit function for both organisms?

7. What are the two opening just anterior to the anal fin? Where does each lead to, and through which structure?

8. Where is the lateral line located? Is it on both sides? Describe what it looks like. What is its purpose?

11/13/2017- Salmon Dissection
www.surgery-games.org
10/11/2017- Today you will be a realtor for the ocean neighborhood! You will need to use the colored paper that is upfront on my desk and either individually or with a partner create a brochure that will sell 'property' in any zone of the ocean. You will need to explain the different zones in the ocean their benefits and their detriments. You will need to talk about the water qualities and physical qualities of each zone, as well as how the animals and ocean life in each zone have adapted to those qualities. Include all Benthic (deep water) and Pelagic (ocean floor) zones. You can be creative with this! Just be sure that there are details about each of the zones you are 'selling' hoses in!! You will have some time next class period to finish this. You can use the internet, and also Ocean Zone Powerpoint

10/6- 10/9/2017- Students will manipulate the variables on the NOOA Tide page to create a map that shows the tide patterns for the areas researched. This can be done as a small group, or as an individual. Use the link below:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.html
Honor's Paper: Due October 17th by Midnight. No late papers will be accepted.
Choose a species of whale that has had negative interaction with mankind. Please let me know your whale you choose before you start.

Your paper should include the following: A short description of the whale species and how it interacts with its environment. The description should include specific behaviors The majority of the paper needs to document the interaction of the species with mankind. What have been possible solutions to the negative impact? What is the long term outlook for the species?

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the effect that the invasive species has had on the ecosystem. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.

If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, come see me and I will help you register.

Turnitin Codes:
Marine Biology Honors period 1
Class ID: 16570059
Password: marine1
Marine Biology Honors period 4
Class ID: 16570047
Password: marine4
Marine Biology Honors period 5
Class ID:16570054
Password: marine5

If you are having problems text or call me!! No matter how late in the evening. No late papers accepted.

9/25/2017- Today students will attend to their tanks by checking all chemicals, and salinity. They will also clean their tanks on the outside. If needed they can remove 1 and a half pitchers of water in a water change. Then students will need to define vocal words for quiz on Friday. Then they will read articles and write a 1 paragraph response paper for each to be turned in today. They may use the chrome books.. Article 1 Article 2

9/22/17- Salinity will be addressed in the tanks, tests will be performed and a discussion of the Tsunami in Japan. Vocal words for a quiz next Friday the 29th will be handed out.

Vocal Words for quiz on Sept. 29th.
Osmocomforter, Salinity, Hypotonic, Solvent, Solute, Solution, Catadromous, Halophile, Plasmolysis, Anadromous, PPT, Ion, Isotonic, Osmoregulator, Euryhaline, Stenohaline

9/19/2017- Students will discuss tsunami and hurricanes, and will view tsunami videos. To make a Google sheets graph of your tank tests, and to be able to keep track of all your tests use this link- THEN you MUST make a copy of the file for yourself- then rename it for your tank number. If you do not make a copy you will alter everybody's.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19NtzhHRKccxDUaEUErfStdNZQdKC6yWON5llqzWfS_s/edit?usp=sharing

9/15/2017- Students will monitor tanks, and perform talk tests. Class will review landforms, trenches, and plate tectonics.

9/13/17- Tank tests, present our Body of Water presentation, Hurricane Irma powerpoint and videos

9/9/17- Tank set-up!!!

9/7/2017- Students will prepare for water in the tanks by choosing fish for the aquariums. The "running of the decor" will occur today! (students picking decor for their tank) Students will also be asked to create a digital presentation on a Body of Water of their choice. Be sure to include qualities of the water such as Salinity, depth, temperature, and animals living or using the water. Also research man's affect, usage, and influence on the water. This should be a digital presentation, but should only take 3-4 minutes to present. Make this a very visual presentation; lots of pictures, little bits of writing. T hese are Due Wednesday for per. 1 & 5, and Thursday for per. 4. Email me a link to your presentation. If you do NOT see your name you were probably not the first text for that body of water. Text me with a different pick. These are the chosen topics:

Per. 1
Tanner- Dead Sea Jackson- Bay of Fundy Ben- Red Sea Sean- Mediterranean
Weston- Black Sea Natalie- Sargasso Sea Claire- Caspian Pablo- Gulf of Mexico
Kira- Caribbean Sea Alex H.- Hudson Bay Mackenzie- Gulf of California
Franny- G.Aus. Blight D'Marco- Baffin Bay Jack- Lake Baikal Arabella- Baltic

Per. 5
Carter- Bay of Fundy Magdalen- Baltic Sea Rachel- Dead Sea
Lily- Caribbean Sea Aiden- G.S.Lake Brittania- Coral Sea
Olivia- Yangtze Linda- Arctic Ocean Mikayla- Grand Spring
Ezra- Gulf of Mexico Nasiya- Indian Ocean John- Bering Sea
Nell- South China Sea Daniel- Sea of Cortez Cera- Black Sea
Josue- Atlantic Renn- Indian Ocean (whole) Brandan- Baltic Sea
Tyler- Caspian Sea Alex N.- Pacific
per 4.
Conn

9/5/2017- Map activity with labeling water related structures..

8/31/2017- Quiz on the Nitrogen cycle, and the tank tests. Also a lab activity testing 3 different water sources for Nitrates, Nitrites, pH, and Ammonia.

8/24/2017- Review of possible fish for fishtanks, and discussion of groups. Notes on
Nitrogen Cycle powerpoint Students will practice the Tank Tests info
HOLIDAY CLEAN YOUR TANK DAY IS DEC. 30!!! 9:00- 12:00. You must text me to get in. Back door only. Park out back. Marine Biology Syllabus 2015
Dissections are not required- there will be an alternative assignment if you do not want to dissect.
Semester 2:
1/9/16- Phylum Porifera Porifera vocal Phylum Porifera Sponges Power point

1/17/17- Animal Body Plans- For fitting function

1/19/17- Sponge Test will be in Thursday/Friday classes

1/25/17- http://discovermagazine.com/tags?tag=echinoderms Read these 7 short articles and write a short synopsis for each one that highlights the evolutionary strategies of the Echinoderms, and what they can do to ensure their own survival. Turn your summaries in to the substitute today for full credit.

2/10/17- Study Guides for test. Mostly identification. of the 3 classes of Echinodermata. Be able to explain how form fits function as well.

Phylum Echinodermata 3 classes Powerpoint for three classes of Echinodermata

2/21/17- Students will need to do a deep cleaning of their tank.Fischer, my TA, will be able to help with making water, or any problems with the tanks. Feeding is very important today!! Everyone needs to feed their fish well. The Chrome cart D is in my room, and students can use a chrome book to complete work on their Cnidarian paper. Non-Honors is due on the 23rd, and Honors is due on March 3rd. The paper should cover the following:
Topics listed below:
Cnidarian Paper: Non honors Due February 23rd by Midnight. Honors due by March 3rd, Midnight. No late papers will be accepted.

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages for honors, and 2-3 pages for Non-honors, (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the effect that the invasive species has had on the ecosystem. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.
Topic:
If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, come see me and I will help you register.

Choose a species of Cnidarian and create an extensive profile of the species and it's interaction with it's environment, its physical adaptations to help it survive in the environment, AND its relationship or value to mankind. Be sure to include any scientific research or medicines that are associated with your chosen species.

3/17/2017- The Coral Project will be due on Thursday or Friday this coming week- depending on your class. (Individual projects) You have two choices for your project:

1. Create a Public Service Announcement that can have some impact on the public in Colorado. You can educate them on their impact on the Ocean, and the Coral Reefs, or give them a call to action and show them ways to help protect the Coral Reefs even though we live in Colorado. This can be done in any form; a commercial, a brochure, a flyer, video, etc.

Or
2. You can create a drawing or depiction of a Coral Reef that has representatives in it from all 4 Classes of Cnidarian that we have covered. You also need to include labeling of what the specimens are, and what class they are included in. Be sure to show balance in 'your reef' (to get this balance you will probably need to add animals from other phylums) This can be drawn, or even cut out pictures, or digital.

4/19/17-
For the people who missed the Aquarium Field Trip:
Students will need to fill out the Mollusca Table sheet that is on my desk. Students received handouts yesterday from their peers who presented information on each Class of Mollusca. They can use those sheets to fill out the worksheet. This MUST BE TURNED IN TODAY. However far they get on this worksheet does not matter. I need them to all be collected at the end of the period.

You may use the internet and research the following from any Aquarium website, not just the Denver Aquarium. Describe the environment that needs to be built and used to properly maintain the following organisms. Be sure to include what is needed to feed them, what salinity, and temperature they might need, and how much space, for them to be healthy. What are some problems encountered with housing these animals in an artificial environment. Choose 2 animals.
Nurse sharks Sea Horses Clown Fish Electric Eel Lion Fish Upside down Jelly Giant Grouper

5/7/17-
Topics listed below:
Honor's Paper: Due May 19th by Midnight for seniors / May 26 Juniors No late papers will be accepted.

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, (4 pages for seniors) (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.

If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, come see me and I will help you register.
Turnitin Codes:
Topic: Choose one species of Shark, and research all aspects of the shark's anatomy, physiology, behavior, reproduction, and niche. Create a comprehensive profile of the species you have chosen. You do not need to review 'traits of all sharks'. I am your audience, and already know the traits of Chondroicthyes.

Marine Biology Honors period 1
Class ID: 13657913
Password: marine1
Marine Biology Honors period 6
Class ID: 13657917
Password: marine6

5/12/17- Shark dissection day 1: Describe the skin and the texture of the skin. Looking at the pattern of the scales how does that help with defense? How many total fins does the Dogfish have? Which fins is it missing that a Great White would have? Why do you think it doesn't need those fins? How long was your shark? Or How long is a typical adult Dogfish? How long are they able to live? Do you have a male or female? How do you know the difference?What is a myomere? Describe how it's structure helps the shark move? How much fat do sharks have? How does that affect their lifestyle?
f you are in period 1 describe the Ampullae of Lorenzini, and how the form of the pores helps with their specific function.
If you are period 6 then describe the shape and structure of the gills from the inside and their relationship to the heart. Describe the heart, its structure, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of having this type of heart. Even though sharks have no bones, how would you describe the type and texture of the cartilage skeletal system? What are the advantages and disadvantages for having this type of system?

5/15/17- Shark Dissection Day 2: Period 1 answer the following- Describe the shape and structure of the gills from the inside and their relationship to the heart. Describe the heart, its structure, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of having this type of heart. Even though sharks have no bones, how would you describe the type and texture of the cartilage skeletal system? What are the advantages and disadvantages for having this type of system?
Period 6 answer the following: After opening up the body cavity describe what you see. What is the sharks biggest organ? How many lobes does this organ have? What is the function of this organ and how does it specifically help the shark? Describe the stomach and its lining? How does the lining help the shark digest food? What is the Spiral valve, and in detail how does it's form fit it's function? Why is it so unique, and how does its unique design help the shark?

All work from seniors must be turned in by 3:00 pm Friday. No exceptions.
http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/black-ocellaris-clonwfish-died.157149/
Shark Dissection Day 3: Period 1 and 6: Describe the spiral valve of the shark. What is so unique about it? How does Form fit Function? Explain the location of the brain in reference to the body? What is the advantage of the brain being positioned where it is? Describe the ratio of the brain to the body size. What is their brain mainly used for? Why does it not have a large frontal lobe like we do? Describe the nictitating membrane of the eye. How does it help or hinder the animal? Explain what the most impressive part of the shark dissection was.
Florida Keys 2017 Information
Florida Trip meeting October19th 6:00 pm in room 224. Text and I can open the back door.

8/25/15- Introduction to course and teacher

8/27/15- The Nitrogen Cycle Power Point Creating our Groups!!

9/12/16- Complete a world map with all bodies of water. Oceans, Seas, and any large bodies, including freshwater and salt. Each group will choose a single body of water and create a powerpoint presentation that describes the body of water: geographic location, salinity, temperature, organisms, vegetation, mans intervention with the water, any business done with the water, culture, etc. This is due on Thursday, or Friday depending on your class.

Your tanks' Fish Powerpoint is also due on Thursday or Friday depending on your class.

Here is a list of fish that are easy care and could be a great addition to your tank if you aren't sure:
bicolor angel fish, Coral beauty angel fish, nemo clown fish, Bangai cardinal, Pajama cardinal, fire fish, wrasse, algae blenny, scooter blenny, anthias fish - peaceful and beautiful dotty back fish royal gramma

9/23/16- Salinity Powerpoint and Tank Care

9/26/16- Salinity continued, Tank Cards, Water Body presentations

9/28/16- Begin Ocean levels project Tank Care Quiz

10/3/16- Ocean Levels Project- Due at end of class. . Tank care and fish order.
Marine Life Ocean Zones Powerpoint The Ocean Zones Power Point

10/5/16- Tanks ready for fish. Ocean floor Ocean Floor Maps and Ring of Fire

10/20/16- Here are two articles and some questions. Read the articles, and complete the questions, and turn them in to the substitute today.
Garbage Island Article::

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3206442/Watch-humanity-ruin-oceans-Nasa-animation-shows-vast-garbage-islands-taken-seas-35-years.html
Why does the garbage form into 5 areas? How much garbage is there? Why can we not be sure about how much garbage there is? Where has some of it gone? Where does the trash come from?

https://www.theoceancleanup.com Article on Ocean Clean-up What is the Ocean Clean-up project? Then Click on "Technology" and explain how they are cleaning the garbage up- How do they physically clean up the ocean, and what do they use to power the clean up? How much trash is there?
Watch the videos on this website from National Geographic about garbage in the ocean, and our food: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150109-oceans-plastic-sea-trash-science-marine-debris/

Honor's Paper: Due October 14th by Midnight. No late papers will be accepted.
Choose a species of whale that has had negative interaction with mankind.

Your paper should include the following: A short description of the whale species and how it interacts with its environment. The description should include specific behaviors The majority of the paper needs to document the interaction of the species with mankind. What have been possible solutions to the negative impact? What is the long term outlook for the species?

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the effect that the invasive species has had on the ecosystem. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.

If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, come see me and I will help you register.

Turnitin Codes:
Marine Biology Honors period 1
Class ID: 13657913
Password: marine1
Marine Biology Honors period 6
Class ID: 13657917
Password: marine6
Microbial World Packet
If you are having problems text or call me!! No matter how late in the evening. No late papers accepted.

11/7/16- Take notes on protist-plankton-of-the-ocean and on plankton of the Ocean . There is some duplicated material between the two powerpoint. You will have a quiz on these. After taking notes on these types of Plankton look at Plankton Model Assignment

11/9/16- Work on Plankton Assignment Check your tank's salinity. Period 6 especially- you should never vacuum or take water out, until you know there is water to put back in. Do not go to other classrooms during class time either. There is salt water in the barrel. Check the salinity of the barrel before using it.
Pajama, and Lion Fish will be put in the tanks Wednesday night.

11/10 or 11/11- Check tanks first part of class. Finish Plankton design assignment. Take all period to work on your project. No quiz.

1st of 3 sections for Monday and Tuesday 11/14/15- Please READ ALL of this note before doing anything in class. In the Thursday and Friday classes I would like the Honor's students to present a slide show they have prepared with a minimum of 10 slides from your Whale Honor's paper you turned in. This DOES NOT have to be heavily worded. The more pictures, the better! A simple 5 minute presentation about the whale species you wrote about. Because you will have lots of pics and/or video clips it shouldn't matter if there are two presentations on the same whale. My syllabus states that each semester you will present one of the papers that you write about- This is it. If you are excused and gone on Thursday or Friday you can present after break when I'll be back!!

2nd section: TANKS: 11/14/16- There will be no water changes today. You will do a big water change at the end of the week to prepare your tank for Thanksgiving break. You may top your water off if needed. If you have a glass top please don't fill your tank too high. Be sure to do all your chemical tests.

3rd Section CLASSWORK 11/14/16- Take notes from this Power point on whales marine-mammals slides There will be a test on Cetacea and you will need your notes.

Wednesday 11/16/16- Today you will do a SMALL water change. I am trying to get your tanks set-up for a bigger water change on Thursday or Friday depending on your class. Do not remove more than 1 1/2 inches! I know you are diving to take more out- but you want to be able to clean everything out of your tank as close to break as possible!!
Today just try to balance the salinity. You will probably have high salinity. Fischer is going to make the water 28. At the beginning of class tell him your salinity levels so he can adjust the water. Please do not take too much out. Keep an eye on each other. You will be able to clean next class period. Continue taking notes on Cetacea if you have not completed it. ALL HONORS PEOPLES please email me your powerpoint so I can have them up on a computer for your teacher. : )

Friday- Today will be a 4 finger water change, Take out 4 fingers (hand sideways) worth of water. I made the barrel 28.5 last night. I am assuming your tanks might be salty. Fischer can change it if needs be. The tank cleaning can NOT go longer than 11:45!!!. At that time all Honors students will present their presentations. While you are cleaning tanks all honors students should put their names on the board, and use my lap top that is on my desk and download your powerpoint from wherever it is. This way all your powerpoint will be downloaded and the presentations will go faster. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

12/1/16- For the whale videos we watched in class Google " victoria Brown whales marine biology" in Youtube. It has 33 videos.

Non-Honor's Paper: Due December 14th by Midnight. No late papers will be accepted. 2-3 pages
Honor's Paper: Due December 16th by Midnight
Choose an environmental issue that affects the Ocean, or animals living in it.

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the effect that the invasive species has had on the ecosystem. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.

If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, come see me and I will help you register.

Turnitin Codes:
Marine Biology Honors period 1
Class ID: 13657913
Password: marine1

If you are having problems text or call me!! No matter how late in the evening. No late papers accepted.
ALL MARINE BIO STUDENTS: Each person must correct their Final from semester 1. Each wrong question needs the right answer AND a 1 or 2 sentence with evidence to support/explain it. VERY IMPORTANT: Regardless of which period you are in- The corrected test must be in my room by 7:45 am on Monday January 9th. The collection basket will be located in front of the door to the back room. Any test not in the basket by 7:45 will automatically be 20% off of corrections. marine final 1 marine final 2 (By looking at your answer to question #1 you will know if you took Test 1 or Test 2)
12/12/16- Blackfish the movie
12/14/16- Review of Plankton and Cetacea for Final
12/15/16- Final Test and light tank water change
12/19/16 12/20/16- Tank water change for the long break- a graded assignment

Those not choosing to dissect the squid or octopus please see me for your alternate assignment to get credit for the dissection.

4/6/17- Mollusca Jigsaw Projet

Class: Polyplacophora, Gastropoda, Bivalvia, Cephalopa
Each group needs to research the following for their chosen Class:

Characteristics of the Class, Anatomy (include diagrams), a list of related vocab,Feeding, Digestion, Respiratory, Excretory, Sensory, Circulatory, Reproduction and Habitat. You can make handouts, or flyers that you can use to teach a group of your peers about your chosen Class. I will make copies for you. You will be the expert for your topic.
11/19/15-
10/5/15- Watch the Khanacademy.org video titled "Water- Liquid Awesome"
Answer the following questions:
1. Explain the difference between covalent and Ionic bonds.
2. Describe where these bonds occur in water molecules.
3. Describe what it means to be a polar molecule.
4. Describe each of the 5 unique properties that water has.
5. Define density, and describe where is the most dense water in the ocean.
6. Describe salinity. How is it measured and what is the average salinity of the ocean?
7. List 6 colligate properties of water.

Honor's Paper: Due December 11th by Midnight. No late papers will be accepted.
Choose one of the following for your topic:

Oil Spills and their effect on that area (find a specific oil spill area), Drilling rigs and their effects on the ocean in that area, and trash in the oceans.

Your paper should include the following: A short description of the whale species and how it interacts with its environment. The description should include specific Marine Biology Honors period 1
Class ID: 13657913
Password: marine1
Marine Biology Honors period 6
Class ID: 13657917
Password: marine6 The majority of the paper needs to document the interaction of the species with mankind. What have been possible solutions to the negative impact? What is the long term outlook for the species?

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the effect that the invasive species has had on the ecosystem. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.
Turnitin Codes: Marine Biology Honors period 5 Marine Biology Honors period 6
If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, come see me and I will help you register.
If you are in the Orchestra group that will be gone the week of finals this message is for you:
It is imperative that you are in class everyday!!! Please make a genuine effort to be in class everyday. I have planned it out that you will be able to take the Final during class time. If you miss any days then you will probably not be able to make up the work and take the final. Three weeks of school left!, and lots to do! We can do it!!! Ocean Floor Maps
If you are having problems text or call me!! No matter how late in the evening. No l
FINAL IS NOW ON THURSDAY!!! WE WILL TAKE THE TEST AND CLEAN THE TANKS!!!!
12/9/15- Links to study Sponges Phylum Porifera Sponges Sponge cells and types Sponge cells and information Be able to identify a picture of a sponge and label the parts and cells.

1/14/16- Cnidarian notes and tank cleaning Cnidarian Power Point

1/19/16- Students will be put into research groups and be given a Class of Cnidarian to create an informational project to be presented to the class. The presentation will be due on Wednesday Jan. 27th. Students will be able to work on projects on Monday/Tuesday classes. Be sure to include Anatomy, Digestion, Reproduction, Life style, Niche, and how they capture their food.

1/25/16- Work on projects.

1/27/16- Present projects.

Tests over Cnidarian will be Thursday and Friday
Topics listed below:
Honor's Paper: Due February 19th by Midnight. No late papers will be accepted.

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the effect that the invasive species has had on the ecosystem. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.
Topic:
If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, come see me and I will help you register.

Choose a species of Mollusca and create an extensive profile of the species and it's interaction with it's environment AND its relationship or value to mankind. Be sure to include any scientific research or medicines that are associated with your chosen species. You MUST let me know your chosen species before writing your paper. (just don't want too many duplicates)

2/1/16- Tanks and Cnidarian presentations

2/3/16- Cnidarian presentations

2/5/16- Cnidarian Test Mollusca Vocab Vocab is due at end of class Wednesday. (Use the Zoology book on the book case behind the door to my back room)

2/8/16- Students will finish the vocab for the Mollusca Phylum and will use the Zoology book to define the vocab. Use page 657 to take notes on the traits that are specific for the Phylum Mollusca. Vocab and notes are due at end of class on Wednesday.

2/11/16- mollusk worksheet Complete this worksheet, focus on Bivalves and Gastropods. Make sure you have completed the work from 2/8/16 above. All will be due on Wednesday the 17th. (I will probably be too tired to collect it- so really, thursday or friday). : )

Mollusca Power point (some pics removed because it was too big)

2/22/16- Bivalve dissection Clam Dissection Mussel anatomy

3/3/16- Tank time and notes on

3/17/16- Cephalopod and light Use this link to complete this PACKET

3/24/16- Mollusca Test will be a project since we have so many Majors traveling.
If you are in Band you can turn this in the Monday you get back. Everyone else will turn this in on April 6 at the beginning of your class. This project can be digital, a painting, mobile, structure, etc!! Be creative!!

5/2/16- Homework Watch this video for 5 - 10 minutes. Write down 10 observations about the fins, shape size, movement and location, and how the specific movements are made with the fins. (fish only). Write a short description of 2 fish you focussed on.

5/3/16- Honors Paper:
Topics listed below:
Honor's Paper: Due May 17th by Midnight. No late papers will be accepted.

Your research paper should be a minimum of 5-6 pages, (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper needs no fewer than three outside, scholarly sources (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source (check with me if you are unsure).

Outside of the 5-6 page paper please include a Works Cited sheet, and a 1 page cover sheet that has your name and period on it- no need to put your name on the rest of the pages. The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the effect that the invasive species has had on the ecosystem. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Graphics and pictures can be included outside the 5-6 page paper. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight. Your audience is a person with a scientific background. Be sure to not write about something you can't explain yourself to me.

If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, come see me and I will help you register.
Turnitin Codes:
Topic: Choose one species of Shark, and research all aspects of the shark's anatomy, physiology, behavior, reproduction, and niche. Create a comprehensive profile of the species you have chosen. You do not need to review 'traits of all sharks'. I am your audience, and already know the traits of Chondroicthyes.
Phylum Echinodermata powerpoint
Quiz on Echinodermata:

5/11/16- Shark dissection questions:
Look up how sensitive a sharks sense of smell is (through the nose). How do the Ampullae of Lorenzini work? How many total fins does a Dogfish shark have? Which ones are they?

If you are the Lead Cutter please look at the diagram of the shark anatomy in the
Shark Powerpoint

5/12 and 5/13/16- Questions for the Shark dissection:
Describe the Ampullae of Lorenzini. How close together, or far apart were they. How might this density, or lack of density help the animal? Describe the skin when you 'petted' the shark. How much fat was in the shark? How does this affect their lifestyle? Explain where the liver is found in the shark body, what texture does it have, and how does that relate to what the liver does?

5/16/ and 5/17/16- Shark Quiestions
Florida Keys trip
Describe the layout of the organs in the sharks body? How does form fit function? Explain how the structure of the esophagus fits the lifestyle of the shark and how it eats. Based on the digestive tract layout what is the function of the stomach? (be specific for the shark- think about where the food goes next). What are advantages and disadvantages for the Spiral Valve? Explain why this unusual trait has lasted for over 400 million years in sharks.
Why were there some eggs up in the sides of the shark? Explain how the babies get nutrients and grow. What did you see if the eggs were not fertilized?

The Marine Biology Book is called "Marine Biology" Peter Castro and Michael E. Huber 5th edition is good. (high school binding is fine ..................................too) ISBN# 9780073624160.

Click here for the Marine-Biology-Syllabus-2014

Click here for the Honors slip

9/2- Tank equipment set up. Researching fish for tanks.

9/4-5- Body of Water Presentation: Due on Thursday/Friday per 5/6
Powerpoint or Prezzi presentation needs 15 slides
Temperature Depth Salinity Land structures around or in it Tides
Currents Human impact on the water, or area , Vertebrates in the water, including fish, Invertebrates, including crustaceans and Mollusks.
Students need to make this a pictorial presentation supported by facts and descriptions. You may use a sheet to look off of while presenting, but not just "reading" facts.
You have 5 minutes to present facts and statistics about your Body of Water

9/10- Students will discuss traits of salt water and create an experiment to test properties of salt water.

9/11- Student generated experiments on salinity and it's physical characteristics.
Marine Biology Honor's Paper Assigned: Marine Biology Honors 1st Quarter Paper Due Oct. 11th, 2014.

This is the rubric I use on grading your paper.

The student must choose a topic and write a 5 page research paper (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper must have no fewer than three outside, scholarly source (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source.

Include Works Cited, and a 1 page cover sheet (not included in the five page minimum, no more than 6). The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the concept. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight.
Turnitin.com codes:
If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, just go to turnitin.com and register. It is easy and all you need is to make a password for yourself and an email you can

Marine Biology Honor's Per 5
Class Code: 8816714
Class Password: marineh5

Marine Biology Honor's Per 6
Class Code: 8816716
Class Password: marineh6

9/15- Students are introduced to the tank tests with The Nitrogen Cycle and your tank

9/17- Students will use the Owl book to review The Nitrogen Cycle.
Students will read pages 415-423 and answer questions on page 423.
Students will define Ammoniafication, Nitrification, Denitrification.
Read pages 431-434 on Ocean Zones Answer questions on page 434

9/18- Students will complete Tank Tests notes on all the tests needed for tanks
Students will then read introduction and 1st chapter of The Log of the Sea of Cortez
I will copy parts of The Log from the Sea of Cortez and put it online as we need it.

9/22- - Tank Set up

10/1 - Students will create a diagram of the Oceanic Zones. They will then create fish that are fictitious for the different levels. Students will then write a description of how each fish is best adapted to that level.

10/3- Due on 10/6- read Chapter 3 in the Marine Biology Book or the Chapter titled "Chemical and Physical Features of SeaWater and the World Ocean" in a different edition.
Only read to the bottom of page 56. We will not read about Tides right now. Take notes and define the following from the Chapter:

Hydrogen Bond, Element, Evaporation, Density,Latent Heat, Heat Capacity, Solute, Solvent, Salinity, Water Column, Transparency, 1 Atmosphere, Thermocline Circulation,
Coriolis Effect, Trade Winds, Westerlies, Polar Easterlies, Gyres,

Map Assignment: Students will map sea floor structures, Oceans, and Currents.

11/6- Whale/Dolphin Powerpoint Students will create a 16 slide Powerpoint that focuses on a particular Marine Mammal from the Order Cetacea. Due on Thursday 13th or 14th depending on your class. There should be no duplicates, i.e. only one person is researching the blue whale, only one person the Orca, etc.

Slides need to include pictures, as well as the following information:
Size, markings, special characteristics, and special adaptations to make them fit well with their habitat. Their classification (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, etc to species). The special characteristics or requirements animals have to have to be categorized in their Family.

12/3- Blackfish Article Write a 2 page paper answering the following:
"Why is it we feel so strongly about what is being done to these Orca's, yet virtually every city in the world has a Zoo that takes animals from their habitats and locks them up in a small enclosure for people to pay to see? What about the Circus? Elephants taken from Africa, to be chained and trained for people to see? They all make $$$$$. (Sea World makes billions-still) Why is this acceptable in our culture?

Honors Paper: Students will choose 1 Coral Reef from anywhere in the world, and write a research paper that will include the following:

Choose 1 of the following Reefs: If there is a * next to it then it has been taken for per 5. If there is a # next to it then it has been taken for period 6.

*Great Barrier Reef
Red Sea Coral Reef
Great Chagos Reef
# Mesoamerican Reef (Florida not included for per 5 or 6- Belize not included for per 5)
Apo Reef
Florida Keys Reef
*New Caledonian Barrier Reef
Andros Barrier Reef
Saya de Malha Banks
Reed Bank
*Zhongsha Islands
*Belize Reef (not available for per 6)

For the Reef that you choose I want a well researched profile of the Reef, which will be the first page of your paper. The next 4-6 pages should be research on the history of the reef, and the influences that are affecting the reef right now (i.e. global warming, oil spills, over fishing, tourists, bleaching, etc.) You will have to choose the top 2 issues only that are affecting your particular reef. No more than 2 issues, because I want it to be more in depth. Pictures of your reef can be added to the end of the paper.

This paper will be due on the 14th by midnight. I will have it open early on Turnitin if you want to turn it in early.

The student must choose a topic and write a 5 page research paper (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper must have no fewer than three outside, scholarly source (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source.
Turnitin.com codes:
Include Works Cited, and a 1 page cover sheet (not included in the five page minimum, no more than 6). The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the concept. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight.

Marine Biology Honor's Per 5
Class Code: 8816714
Class Password: marineh5

Marine Biology Honor's Per 6
Class Code: 8816716
Class Password: marineh6

12/15- Marine Final Semester 1: Final will include the following:
(40%)
Ocean Zones,
Nitrogen Cycle,
Chapter 3 (but only up to page 55)
tank tests, and tank care
60%
marine mammals powerpoint Marine mammal powerpoint pdf
Whales- anatomy, behaviors learned through blackfish and class discussion, traits of both toothed and baleen whales,
Traits of all mammals,
Traits of all Cetaceans
Sea Lions and Seal traits
Dolphins and Porpoises
Order Sirenia (Manatees and Dugongs) Just info that is in powerpoint
1/7/15- Tides; Spring and Neap, moon phases, and waves.

1/9/15- Students need to obtain a copy of the book "The Log from the Sea of Cortez" John Steinbeck.

1/12/15- Using the following links, first examine the expedition that tried to find the ship trouvadore.

You are being given an 'imaginary' wreckage, and a place in the world where your ship was wrecked. You need to develop the following for your Ship Wreck.

A Powerpoint presentation that includes the following:
How, and when your ship wrecked
Your ships type, its cargo/background and name
A plan of how and when to excavate your wreckage, including details
Tide Graphs of your wreckage area
Physical description of the area include all abiotic factors - temp, winds, weather, etc
Biotic factors- Any dangers, animals, etc that could affect your rescue
Create a Storyline- background of your wreck

Tide Graphs The Search for the Trouvadore

1/14/15- Continue work on wreckage

1/15/15- Continue work on wreckage Due next class period.

1/20/15- Students will present Wreckage Plan to class.

1/22/15- Complete wreckage plan presentations

1/27/15- Field Trip to Whale Exhibit! I am unable to email you through IC- please talk to your parents, or older siblings about helping out. Text me

2/3/15- Finish Phylum Porifera and work on tanks

2/4/15- Phylum Porifera notes

2/10/15- Phylum Cnidarian characteristics class discussion, youtube Cnidarians

2/11/15- Phylum Porifera Quiz (showcase day)

2/12/15- Cnidarian vocab. Nematocyst, Gland Cell, Mesoglea, Body Stalk, Tentacle, Basal Disc, Subumbrella, Exumbrella, Gastrovascular Cavity, Myoneme, Cnidocil, Cnidocyte, Medusoid, Polyploid, Epitheliomuscle cells, Nutritive Muscle Cells, Interstitial Cells, Budding, Planula, Gonozooid, Gastrozooid, Manubrium, Radial Canal, Velum, Ring Canal, Statocysts, Polymorphism, Actinula,

2/18/15- Assignment suspended: Cnidarian Zoology book questions, Define and give examples of each Class of Cnidarians. Scyphozoa, Cubazoa, Hydrozoa, Scleractinian, and Octocorals (soft corals)

2/19/15- Jellyfish salad and Cnidarian notes
Cnidarian Papers are due on 2/23 or 2/24 (depending on your class). 1 1/2 page typed paper on the cnidarian that you have chosen. Text me your choice to see if it is available. Vocab for Cnidarians also due on Monday. (see 2/12/15) Cnidarian Powerpoint

2/23/15- Presentations on Cnidarians. Cnidarian notes. Jellyfish salad.

2/26/15- Students will each specialize on 1 of the different classes, and then teach what they have learned to other groups in the class. Need to include Anatomy, Life cycle and Reproduction, Nutrition and Respiration.

3/2/15- Honor's Paper. Students will choose 1 critically endangered Marine Animal and will research the evolution, history, and factors that have led to their current degraded state. Be sure to include what is being done to help the species. Due on March 13 by midnight.

The student must choose a topic and write a 5 page research paper (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper must have no fewer than three outside, scholarly source (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source.

Include Works Cited, and a 1 page cover sheet (not included in the five page minimum, no more than 6). The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the concept. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight.
Turnitin.com codes:
If you are registered then use the codes below to access your class. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE YOUR PAPER. Upload your paper. (it will mess with your format if you cut and paste.) If you are not registered, just go to turnitin.com and register. It is easy and all you need is to make a password for yourself and an email you can

Marine Biology Honor's Per 5

Class Code: 8816714
Class Password: marineh5

Marine Biology Honor's Per 6
Class Code: 8816716
Class Password: marineh6

3/11/15- Students will work in groups of 2-3 and will create a Venn Diagram with all the classes in Phylum Cnidarian. They will also create a list of all common traits of all Phylum Cnidarian. They can take a picture of this assignment, but need to turn the sheet in to the box.

3/12/15- Quiz on Cnidarian

4/6/15- Bivalve Quiz - Clam dissection.

4/8/15- Bivalve systems

4/9/15- Cephalopods- Anatomy and systems

Honor's Paper: Students will choose a species of Shark to research. Students will need to include specifics about their organism such as; anatomy, behaviors, mating, organism culture, etc. P apers will be due on Saturday April 25th, by midnight.

Late Papers are automatically 30% off.

The student must choose a topic and write a 5 page research paper (double spaced, 12 point font, Times New Roman font). The paper must have no fewer than three outside, scholarly source (3-5 sources). Wikipedia is not a scholarly source! Be careful using sources that end in .com. Be sure it is a reliable source.

Include Works Cited, and a 1 page cover sheet (not included in the five page minimum, no more than 6). The paper must utilize scientific vocabulary and demonstrate an understanding of the concept. Plagiarism in any form will result in a depletion of points, based on the degree of plagiarism. The paper should not have lengthy quotes, or numerous quotes. I am looking for your synthesis of ideas and the research you do. Do not use the word I, or we. The paper should be written in third person. Papers must be submitted to turnitin.com by midnight.

Marine Biology Honor's Per 5
Class Code: 8816714
Class Password: marineh5

Marine Biology Honor's Per 6
Class Code: 8816716
Class Password: marineh6

5/4- Echinodermata online quiz

5/15- Shark Dissection Guide

5/22- - Good bye seniors! see you at Graduation! Today you need to test your tank water. Fish will be leaving us on Wednesday!!! After your tanks are good, research the following:

Phylum Porifera and all their traits and the different classes
Phylum Cnidarian and all their traits and the different classes
Class Mammalia and all their traits
Order Cetacea and all their traits and the different types of animals
Phylum Cnidarian and all their traits and the different classes
Phylum Mollusca and all their traits and the different classes
Phylum Echinodermata and all their traits and the different classes
Class Chondricthyes and all their traits (no need to break these out into different groups- we didn't go over it)

You can keep the notes you make today, but I will ask to see them on Wednesday next week. You can work together but everyone needs their own notes. This can be in the form of your own notes you already took in class highlighted, or typed notes, or handwritten.

Your final will be watching "Finding Nemo" and being able to identify the animals in the movie.

Click here for Marine Biology Syllabus 2013

8/29/13- Gummy Bear Surgery using medical terms.

9/6/13- Review of the Nitrogen Cycle. Students will create a fictional Fish Tank and will add the Nitrogen Cycle to the tank. Students will also be given a research assignment on a Body of Water of their choice. The presentation needs to include the following:

Body of Water Presentation:
Powerpoint or Prezzi presentation needs 15 slides
Include abiotic and biotic factors
Temperature Depth Salinity Land structures around or in it Tides
Currents Human impact on the water, or area , Vertebrates in the water, including fish, Invertebrates, including crustaceans and Mollusks.
Students need to make this a pictorial supported by facts and descriptions. You
may use a sheet to look off of while presenting, but not just "reading" facts.

9/18/13- Ocean Layers Venn Diagram Compare and contrast abiotic and biotic factors

9/23-27/13- Prepare for Tank Filling. 27th- Set up and Fill Tanks

10/8/13- Homework Vocab is due on Friday. Any questions- ask me Wednesday.

Vocab: Hydrogen bonds, evaporation, density, heat capacity, latent heat of evaporation, hydrothermal vents, salinity, water column, dissolved gas (general definition), transparency, atmosphere (related to pressure), stable (relate to ocean), downwelling, overturn, mixed layer, Intermediate layer, main (deep) thermocline (these are all ocean layers), Coriolis effect, trade winds, westerlies, polar easterlies, Ekman spiral, wave, trough, height, wavelength, fetch, swell, tide, spring tide, neap tide, tsunami.

Public Service Announcement is due October 15th. Below are the links to Chapter 3 of the Marine Biology book. If you have a book you do not to print these out. It is quite a few pages, I have them listed in order of the pages.

Chapt 3 part 1 Chapt 3 part 2 Chapt 3 page 43 (in the previous link this page is too small)

You may choose one of the following topics to make a public service announcement that could be used to educate the common person about your topic. These are all found in this chapter. You may make a movie, a brochure, a trifold, a public poster, etc.

Water- Its physical and chemical properties
Tides- Different types of tides, and what causes them
Water Column in the Ocean- Differences in the water from surface to the deep
Salt Water- Characteristics and traits, temperature and density effects
Waves in the Ocean- Characteristics of waves, and how wind and Coriolis effect them
Marine Biology Honors Assignment: Marine Biology Honors 1st quarter Paper
Be sure to let me know your topic before you start.
10/21/13- Read the other sections of Chapter 3 that you did not do your project on in order to be ready for your quiz on Tuesday. No specific questions to answer.

Turnitin codes:

Class ID: 7210144
Passcode: fishes

10/29/13- Students took notes on Ocean Layers Ocean Layers Youtube

11/30/13- Read Chapter 8 "March 17" in The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck and answer the following prompts.

1. Steinbeck is known for his ability to paint a picture in the reader's mind with his words, and make them feel as if they were part of the story. Find 4 areas where you feel Steinbeck is very descriptive. Write the example and the page # where it can be found.

2. What is Sally Lightfoot? Describe them, where they can be found, and give their genus and species.

3. What did Steinbeck think was the biggest difference between Darwin's explorations and their own? Explain.

Marine Honors Paper: Choose 4 Tide Pool organisms to research, and write a paper about their interconnectedness within the tide pool. Hints on what you could include in your research:
Marine Biology Honors 2nd quarter Paper
Classification (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order Family, Genus, species), nutrition, diet, (herbivore, omnivore, carnivore), hunting or scavenging, territorial or nomadic, specialized behaviors, reproduction, etc.
Introduce these animals and then show how they are all tied together in their niche.

Turnitin codes:

Class ID: 7210144
Passcode: fishes

Final will be on Dec 19th. Final will cover Nitrogen cycle, Tanks, tank care, tides, coriolas effect, water characteristics, sponges.

FINALS: Don't forget that you have your project due Tuesday the 17th. Choose 1 analogy from the beginning of Chapter 11, as discussed in class. Choose one of Steinbeck's analogy's and make an interpretive representation of that analogy. You must have the quote visible on the project itself. This is Steinbeck comparing man to the Ocean, and the creatures that live in it. No late projects will be allowed.

We will review for the Final Tuesday, and take the Final on Thursday.

This is the Sponge power Point for the quiz on Wednesday Porifera good

1/19- Cnidarian Paper- Students will write a 2-3 page paper that will introduce a particular species of Cnidarian. Species must be pre-approved by Ms. Brown. Paper needs to include the following:

Classification (Class, Genus and Species), habitat of organism including where it can be found geographically and which zones or area's in the water, anatomical description, defense mechanisms, interactions with man (organism affecting man, and man effect on organism), toxins and their effects on their prey, and any other information that is interesting. Paper needs to be Times New Roman 12pt., double spaced, MLA format- no citing needed, only Bibliography with at least 3 reputable sources.
To accompany your paper I would like a Power Point (no Prezzi) with 10 slides or more that is a visual representation of your animal. No need for lots of written information, just short captions, or statistics. I want a pictorial story of your animal. Feel free to add short videos also- no more than 1 min. Your presentation should be about 3-5 min. Use pictures to make us LOVE your Cnidarian!! Paper will be due to Turnitin.com on Feb. 1st by midnight. Presentations will begin on Feb. 3rd in random order. Email presentations by Feb. 4th.

1/22- Marine Cnidaria Power Point Online version

To submit Cnidarian Papers use the following codes:

Honors Students: Non-Honors
Class ID: 7210144 Class ID: 7611346
Passcode: fishes Passcode: clownfish

Coral Species This is a good link for Coral species
Coral Reef ProjectMarine Biology Due date is March 7th, beginning of class.

Honors Marine Biology Research Paper:

Students will choose one organism in the phylum Mollusk and will create a Profile highlighting that animal. The Profile should include a 3 page paper that discusses the following:
Evolutionary trends, comparison of animal to their ancestors adaptations they have made to their environment in order to survive as long as they have, defense mechanisms, and hunting or feeding strategies.

The Profile should also include separate sheets that show animal anatomy (specifically 3 body systems of your choice), an evolutionary tree, and a food web for the animal and their habitat.
Actual 3 page paper needs to be turned into turnitin.com. The extra supporting documents can be emailed to me.
Due Monday at 3:00 pm. No late papers.

Class ID: 7210144
Passcode: fishes

Sea of Cortez- Coral Community. You may choose one of the following: (Due on Friday 14th)

A. Write a 5 page response that is a Dear Diary of the goings-on of animals in your own personal Tank in class, or of the animals that are in your Coral Community that you created.

B. Write a 5 page script of the goings-on of animals in your own personal Tank in class, or of the animals that are in your Coral Community that you created.

Also due on Friday are your notes from Chapter 14 on Corals. These can be turned in at the end of class. Include vocab words with your notes.

2/18/14- Color coded anatomy diagram of Clam and Squid.

Honor's papers Due by Monday afternoon at 3:00 pm to Turnitin.com

Any work that needs to be turned in must be turned in or emailed to me by 5:00 pm on Sunday the 16th. Any work sent after that time will not be counted toward 3rd quarter grade.

4/24- Mollusca Assessment:
You have been chosen to be on a committee that will convince the visiting Aliens from the planet Vatena which animals they should bring back with them to stock a new planet they have found. The planet's atmosphere and environmnet is just like Earth. Your job will be to present which of the 3 main classes of Mollusca should be taken back.

You may make a movie, powerpoint, brochure, commercial, or any other creative means by which to sell the Class of Mollusca that you choose as the ONLY class that will be taken back. We will vote in the class as to which project is the most persuasive and they will receive extra credit! (you may not vote for your own). Assume the new planet has the same resources and situations as Earth does. You will need to include how they eat, reproduce, some helpful anatomy for the 'new owners', and any details that will make them the most appealing to the Aliens.

This will be due on Friday May 2nd. We will Peer Grade the presentations.
Whale Research Paper Due on May 23rd for Non-honor and May 27 for Honors
NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT.
5/2/14- Homework- 8 characteristics of members of Chondricthyes. Have some detail/description with each characteristic. Complete assignment no longer than 1 page.

Students will choose one organism in the Order Cetacea (Whales) and will create a Profile highlighting that animal. You must pre-approve your animal choice with me. The Profile should be a 5-6 page paper for Honor's students, and a 3-4 page paper for Non-Honors students. It should discuss the following:
Evolutionary trends, adaptations they have made that are specific to their environment in order to survive as long as they have, defense mechanisms, and hunting or feeding strategies. Please include at least 1 anatomical picture of your animal that shows internal organs and their relationship. You may include as many pictures as you like, in addition to the required written number of pages. Include in your profile adaptations that they have made as a mammal. (look at Class Mammalia traits) Also include any migratory trends they have, and the reasons for the migrations, and where they can be found.

To submit Whale Papers use the following codes:

Honors Students: Non-Honors
Class ID: 7210144 Class ID: 7611346
Passcode: fishes Passcode: clownfish

5/16/14 - Skate Dissection- For the Skate dissection we did in class you will receive credit for dissecting, and for answering the following questions. Total writing, if you were present for the dissection is about 1 1/2 pages. If you were not here for the Skate then you will need to do the additional material included here.

Skate Dissection questions: Describe the shape of the organism, and how it shows evolution to it's watery environment. How is it's anatomical design a positive, and how its it a negative? Think about the placement of all it's systems, where they are and how they function together. What are it's weaknesses, and what are it's strengths as far as body design goes. Comparing the reproductive syst

Shark Dissection Day 1 Questions: Describe the placement of the fins of the shark around the body. How, specifically do they aid in movement, power or directional guidance? Describe the skin of the shark, what did you notice about it and the underlying muscle when taking the skin off today? Was your shark a male or female? How can you tell? Describe the urogenital opening area (cloaca), and be sure to include what you saw as far as male or female is concerned. Describe the 'face' of the Shark. Be sure to include a description of the nostrils, rostrum, Ampullae of Lorenzini, and the mouth.

Tomorrow we are going to mix groups up - and we are going to run the dissection a little bit more independently. Right when you come into class please give your 1-10 number on the dissecting scale to one person in your group. I need that person to calculate an average dissection number for your group (add all the numbers together- divide by number of people in group).

Upside down Jelly Giant Grouper

Shark Dissection Day 2 questions:
These questions are in addition to completing the Shark packet that you received today. Describe the layers of tissue that you had to cut open to see the internal structure of the shark. Which layers were easier to cut than others? Describe what you saw once you opened up the thoracic cavity. How does Form Fit Function? What are some major differences between the human body cavity and the shark cavity? Where is the heart placed? What type of connections are there between the heart and the gills?

Shark Dissection Day 3 questions:
For each of the following systems describe what you found in your dissection, and how the system has been adapted for the shark and its environment and its life style as an apex predator in the oceans.
Hepatic - Liver
Digestive system- Include the tube the food passes through. They eat whole food, how does the system help with digestion?
Reproduction- Write about the sex of shark that you had. Include fertilization, transfer of sperm and development of 'baby sharks'.
Nervous System- Brain What did you find? What did you expect? What about their brain and its size can you assume about their behaviors and lifestyle?

Marine Biology Final Study Guide
The following topics will be on the Final: ( It will be a Multiple Choice test)

All tests associated with caring for your tank

Tank chemical test results, what it is, what it indicates, and how to fix it.

Nitrates, Nitrites, Ammonia, Salinity, pH, and Salinity

The Nitrogen Cycle- know what it is converted to, by what organism, and how it returns as Nitrogen to the atmosphere.

Water and all it's properties- Hydrogen bonding, special properties of water, heat capacity of water and how it effects ocean temperatures

The effects on the ocean i.e. Coriolis effect, and the Moons gravitational pull

Tides- Neap, Spring, Diurnal, Semi-Diurnal, Mixed tides, Tsunami

Phases of the moon and their connection with the tides

Effects of Salinity on Oxygen content

Change in temperature with depth, Thermocline, in the ocean and its effects on organisms

Dissolved Oxygen and it's relationship to depth and salinity

Zones of the Ocean and differences in the resources and organism in each zone littoral, intertidal zone, pelagic, epipelagic, benthic, abyss, and hadal

Classification levels for organisms (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, etc)

Phylum Porifera traits and characteristics how does it feed itself

Sponge cells including amebocytes, choanocytes, pinacocytes, porocytes, spicules, spongin, and the 3 types of sponge; asconoid, syconoid, and leuconoid

Phylum Cnidarian traits and characteristics and how they feed and how they reproduce

Cnidarian forms Polyp and Medusae basic anatomy of both forms

Phylum Mollusca traits and characteristics of all organisms

Bivalve, Gastropod and Cephalopod traits of each of these Classes

How do each of the Classes feed, defend themselves and reproduce

Chondricthyes traits and characteristics

Shark Anatomy including senses such as lateral line and Ampulae of Lorenzini

Cetacea traits and charactersitics

9/10- Homework given to students. Due on 9/12

Click here for homework Marine Biology Water Vocab

Water Properties Power Point Water Properties Powerpoint

PDF version Water Chemistry and Properties

9/11-Notes on Nitrogen Cycle. NITROGENCYCLE

PDF version NITROGEN CYCLE

Students made a poster illustrating the cycle and how it works in the ocean. Handed in homework. Check and clean tanks.

9/14- First Tank check for a grade. Cleanliness, aesthetics, and Salinity.

9/17- Students will use lap tops to research Oceans and Seas of the World. Need to label a map with the bodies of water and then identify traits of each body to include-
Surface area, depth, Surface Temperature, Mammals, Fish, Invertebrates, Currents, and any other special characteristics. Due on Wednesday.

9/24- Students will define the following words and then create a skit or song for young kids
that will show the relationship between photosynthesis and respiration.

Vocab Photosynthesis Photosynthetic pigment Chlorophyll Carbon dioxide Glucose Carbon fixation Primary producer Respiration Cellular respiration Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) Mitochondria

9/27- Students will take a quiz on Oceans Map, and will be given time to finish their Photosynthesis/Respiration skit. Also maintain tanks.

Homework is to read Chapter 5 The Microbial World and then answer the following questions:

1. Describe the unique characteristics of Prokaryotes.
2. How have Cyanobacteria changed the environment?
3. Make a 3 circle venn diagram comparing autotrophs, heterotrophs and chemosynthetics.
4. Compare and contrast symbiotic vs. parasitic bacteria.
5. Describe what an algae is.
6. What is the importance of Diatoms?
7. Explain why the Bay of Fire is so special.
8. In "Tiny Cells, Big Surprises" how are new species of Archeabacteria identified and classified when found in the ocean?
9. What characteristics do Protists have in common?
10. What two organisms make up a Lichen? What type of relationship do they have?
The Microbial World Part 1
Marine Microbes PowerPoint
The Microbial World Part 1 The Microbial World Part 2
The Microbial World Part 2 PDF Version

***EXAM on Wednesday October, 10th for Marine Biology. Covering: Water Properties/Chemistry; Nitrogen Cycle; Oceans Map/Information; Microbial World

Microbe Pond Water Lab: Pond Microorganisms Lab

10/11 - 20% Water Change and Power Point on Porifera

10/15 - 50% Water Change; sea sponge feeding video, sea sponge anatomy coloring activity

Porifera Power Points: Phylum Porifera PDF

PORIFERA STUDY GUIDE
Study Guide for Porifera

10/16 - Sponge Anatomy Coloring Activity

10/18 - Sponge Magic Circle Vocab: Vocab Exercise
Sponge Digestion Comic Strip
1. Create comic strip with steps in the digestion of a phytoplankton (Diatom, dinoflagellates, cilliates, etc.).
Start as a free floating phytoplankton and describe steps using VOCABULARY until you end up being a waste product and leaving the sponge.
MUST USE TERMS: osculum, ostia, spongin, collar cell, filter feeding, spicules, amoebocytes. flagellum

10/22 - Porifera Quiz : Anatomy and functions of specialized cells.

FISH DEN List of Fish: fish price list

Cnidarian Research Essay - DUE WEDNESDAY November 7th
- Sign up for any species you wish to do, first come first pick. NO DUPLICATE species per class. Requirements posted here: Cnidarian Research Essay

11/5 - Cnidarian PowerPoint: Cnidaria & Ctenophora PDF

TURNITIN.COM for Essays
Marine Biology Honors Per 1
Class ID: 5682843
Enrollment Password: 7777

Marine Biology Honors Per 3
Class ID: 5682855
Enrollment Password: 13579

Marine Biology Honors Per 5
Class ID: 5682860
Enrollment Password: 2468

11/7 - Honors Research Project: Human Impact Project

11/8 - Cnidarian Study Guide: Cnidarians

11/9 - Cnidarian Concept Map in class assignment

TEST about Cnidarians on Tuesday 11/13. HONORS students will have additional problems and essay attached to this test.

11/13 - BP Oil Spill Article : LINK

Questions for Article:
1. Two paragraph summary with evidence found from article (vocab, quotes, ideas).

2. Develop a plan on how to stop disasters like the BP Oil Spill from happening in the future.

11/26 - Read from Marine Biology textbooks - Chapter 7 "Molluscs" section and answer questions:

1. Name the primary classes of molluscs, and special characteristics of each.

2. What is another name for sea slugs and what does their diet consist of?

3. What do the gills in bivalves do?

4. Which mollusk makes mother-of-pearl?

5. What is a radula, describe purpose and function.

6. Which mollusk has a harpoon-like radula?

7. What is the funnel do for cephalopods?

8. What word describes the class polyplacophora?

9. Define infauna.

10. Define veliger.

11/28-Snail Dissection with lab write up.

*****QUIZ********Gastropods/General Mollusc anatomy on Thursday 11/29
PDF Slides: Basic Mollusc and Gastropods

12/3 - Squid Lab with Write Up

********QUIZ*******Bivalves and Cephalopods on 12/6
PDF Slides: Class Bivalvia & Cephalopoda

Study Guide: Mollusca Study Guide

12/6-12/12 - Honors Presentations
Period 1:
Henry Chen - Whaling, Logan Snodderly- Toxic Chemicals, Maddie Rita - Overfishing Oliver Oglesby - BP Oil Spill, Carson ZB- Alien Species

Period 3:
Whaling-Brandi Lusk, Floating Trash Islands - Jack Wegerbauer
Marine Alien Species - Vinny Siller, Marine Debris - Marlo Berberian
Overfishing - Austin Boyd, Toxic Waste - Julia Hemp
Olwyn Scarbeary - Thermal Pollution, Ryan Maltz - Marine Debris, Liam Broadhurst - Overfishing, Madison Nichols - Oil Spills, Alessandra Bongiardina - Alien Species

Period 5:
Brenna Schafer - Whaling, Great Pacific Garbage Patch - Leigh Hogle
Introduced Species - Shawn Crem er, Japanese Whaling - Clarke Sondermann er,
Toxic Chemicals - Madeline Roberts, Lijia Cheng - Invasive Species, Raphae Posner - Oil Spills, Tessa Finley - Shark Hunting, Noah Hubler - Whaling, Amber Tanaka - Dead Zones, Shannon Elder - Whaling

TAKE HOME QUIZ: Honors Presentation Questions DUE MONDAY 12/17

12/13- ***Mollusca Exam***
Study old quizzes and slides that are posted above about gastropods, bivalves and cephalopods.

12/18- FINAL
Study Guide- FINAL STUDY GUIDE

To check on Tanks over the break there will be 2 times that you will need to have at least 1 person from your group make arrangements to come take care of your tank. This is graded and you will lose points for not taking care of your own fish.

Dec. 27th and 28th I will be there from 9-12 each day. Come anytime and take care of your tank. Again, only 1 person needs to be there to test for Nitrogens, pH, and Salinity. You must have someone show up for 1 of these two days.

The next 2 days the tanks will need someone to be there to check on them is on Jan. 3rd and 4th. I will be there from 9-12 noon each day. Again you must have at least 1 person show up to care for your animals. All other times I will be feeding the animals for you. As discussed in class if your whole group is out of town for the break you had to let me know ahead of time. Text or call me with any questions- 303-949-6228. I am also posting updates on Facebook.

2/4- Crustacean quiz on Monday. Crustacean Power Point

2/11- Students are working together in groups to complete their 'Ocean Zone' presentation. Each group must include Abiotic factors such as depth, light, temperature, currents, dissolved Oxygen, and any Earth structures that may effect that zone. Biotic factors include all vertebrates and invertebrates that live in your zone. Be sure to include microscopic invertebrates like Krill, Zooplankton, and Phytoplankton. Also be sure to discuss algae and anything photosynthetic that might be in your zone. These will be presented on Wednesday the 13th.

2/13- Ocean Zone Presentations: You are responsible for getting any notes if you were absent for any of the Zone presentations. These are posted by period. I need presentations sent to my email please.

Quiz over the presentations will be on Wednesday. Use depths from your classes presentations.

Period 1: Abyssalpelagic Zone per 1 Intertidal LittoralZonePresentation Epipelagic Zone per 1 Continental Shelf ESTUARIES per 1 Mesopelagic Zone per 1

Period 3: Abyss Project ContintentalSlope per 3 Estuaries Prezzi Epipelagic Zone per 3
Meso zone per 3 Bathypelagic Zone (Per 3)

Period 5: Continental_Margin per 5 EpipelagicZone per 5 Abyssopalagic Per 5pdf
Mesopalagic Zone Per 5 Estuaries Per 5 Bathypalagic per 5 Bathypalagic per 5
Honor's Biology Paper: Due by March 8th Midnight in to TURNITIN.com

2/21- Echinoderm Art!!! You will have 85 minutes to create an informational, expressive work of art that centers around the phylum Echinodermata.

Honor's students will write a 5 page paper that will present a complete profile of an Ocean, or Sea of their choice. When you have decided on a particular body of water please confirm your choice with me before you begin your project.
The paper format should include:
12 point font, a cover sheet with your name, period, and a title. Font should be Times new roman, margins should all be one inch and there needs to be a bibliography attached (MLA format). The paper (not including the cover sheet or bibliography) needs to be 5 pages minimum, and may be up to 6 pages, but no more.

Body of Water Profile should include: Abiotic information about the water, any effects the surrounding area has on the body of water, any effects the water has on the surrounding area, invertebrates and vertebrates in the water (if there are many then just focus on two that have the greatest impact on the body of water and it's surrounding areas), and primary producers. one third of the paper should discuss one effect that mankind has on the body of water and the surrounding area. It can be a negative like polluting, or over-fishing or a positive like providing food for villages. Be sure to include both pro's and con's for the effect.

Turnitin.com class Id's and codes:

TURNITIN.COM for Essays
Marine Biology Honors Per 1
Class ID: 5682843
Enrollment Password: 7777

Marine Biology Honors Per 3
Class ID: 5682855
Enrollment Password: 13579

Marine Biology Honors Per 5
Class ID: 5682860
Enrollment Password: 2468

4/1- echinodermata Power Point to study for the test on Echinoderms on Thursday

4/12- Shark Paper:
Honors Paper: 5 pages, double spaced, 12 pt. font, times new roman, Cover sheet with classification and name and period, will be the 6th sheet. Full classification needed - from Domain to species . Write the classification on the Cover Page. Discuss evolutionary trends of your particular shark. Try to discuss traits specific to your shark, not specific to all cartilaginous fish. How does their shape/form or special traits fit their behavior and or environment? Due on 28th by midnight. Need to have a presentation on your shark by May 1st.

Non Honor's paper:
Honors Paper: 3 pages, double spaced, 12 pt. font, times new roman, Cover sheet with classification and name and period, this will be the 4th sheet. Full classification needed - from Domain to species . Write the classification on the Cover Page. Discuss evolutionary trends of your particular shark. Try to discuss traits specific to your shark, not specific to all cartilaginous fish. How does their shape/form or special traits fit their behavior and or environment? Due on 26th by midnight.

Turnitin.com codes:

TURNITIN.COM for Essays
Marine Biology Honors Per 1
Class ID: 5682843
Enrollment Password: 7777

Marine Biology Honors Per 3
Class ID: 5682855
Enrollment Password: 13579

Marine Biology Honors Per 5
Class ID: 5682860
Enrollment Password: 2468

Marine Biology Per 1
Class ID: 5795229
Enrollment Password: 2222

Marine Biology Per 3
Class ID: 6397289
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Marine Biology Per 5
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5/13- Shark test will be on Wednesday in class. It will cover:
Chondrichthyes
All traits of the Class, and how form fits function.
Shark Classification.
Be able to talk about the evolution toward cephalization, jawed fish,
vertebrae and craniums.
Shark Anatomy- You can pick your colored sheets up to study.
Be able to identify a variety of sharks and their traits from presentations

Seniors will take their Final in class with the rest of the class. This will be the only Final for Seniors, and will also be the Final for Juniors. Juniors will have a Cetacea test on Finals day. This Final on Monday May 20th will be very difficult to make up, attendance is very important.

Cetacea Articles (if you can't read this article I will make copies tomorrow) Just read the first article only, take some notes on it, so that you will be able to write about it. Then read Cetacea Captivity Care 2010 article. These are both Scholarly articles, not the easiest read. Read through both of them, then write a 1 1/2 page paper that compares and contrast the differences in opinion about Cetacea and their interaction with mankind. The first article is written in 1999, and the second is 2010. This will be due on Thursday, but you will need to have read the articles by class on Tuesday when we will discuss them.

Quiz on Cetacea is on Thursday. Cetacea Cetacea notes More Cetacea notes

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Welcome to Marine Biology 2018 - 2019 Shark Dissection powerpoint Phylum Echinodermata Chondrichthyes info Marine Life ocean zone 1 Porifera phylum info Cnidarian Diversity Please fill out this link for the aquarium field trip permission slip: https://forms.gle/vYcEPNAX3Nma83YJ6 4/15/2019- Vocab words - must be turned in today- the 15th.

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Help shape the new Understanding Evolution! Take our short survey after your visit and you'll be entered in a drawing for a $50 Amazon gift card. Take survey now

The Tree Room

Over 150 years ago, Darwin chose the tree of life as a metaphor for one of the most powerful ideas in biology: the relatedness of all living things. The power of that idea can be seen today in the ubiquity of evolutionary trees (also called phylogenetic trees) in all biological disciplines, from studies of newly discovered species to cutting-edge cancer research. Correspondingly, evolutionary trees have made their way into textbooks, museum exhibits, and the media. To understand modern biology, we all need to understand how evolutionary trees can be read and used.

The Tree Room provides a wide variety of tools for teaching and learning about evolutionary trees in both classrooms and informal science education settings. You can explore the following sections:

Primer - Learn the basics about understanding evolutionary trees. If you are not very familiar with trees, you'll want to start here.

Misinterpretations and intuitive ideas about evolutionary trees - Find out how evolutionary trees are commonly misinterpreted.

Field guide to trees - Confused by a complicated tree from a textbook or the Web? Use our interactive guide to help unpack it.

How to build a tree - Learn about the methods that scientists use to reconstruct evolutionary history.

Trees matter - Discover the many practical applications of evolutionary trees.

For teachers - Get quick tips for incorporating trees into your classroom and browse a special selection of lessons for teaching about trees.

For museums and zoos - Find design tips and other tools to help you effectively incorporate trees into your exhibit.

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Help shape the new Understanding Evolution! Take our short survey after your visit and you'll be entered in a drawing for a $50 Amazon gift card. Take survey now Over 150 years ago, Darwin chose the tree of life as a metaphor for one of the most powerful ideas in biology: the relatedness of all living things.

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Top 18 Species Named After Famous People

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Top 18 Species Named After Famous People

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What do George W. Bush, Roy Orbison and Darth Vader have in common? All three have had new beetle species named after them.

Naming species after celebrities is one seriously effective way for scientists to draw attention to taxonomy. Giving species a famous name for more public interest is "shameless self-promotion," says Quentin Wheeler, the director of the International Institute for Species Exploration in Arizona (whose names populate four of our top-15 list). "When you are a taxonomist and are mentioned in Rolling Stone," Wheeler says, "you know you have arrived."

Scientists are given free rein with naming, as long as they abide by guidelines set by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The rules for patronyms--or scientific names in honor of people--do not limit which names are used. They just provide a uniform naming method. In general, an animal species ending in 'i' is named after one man. The ending 'ae' is for species named after one woman; 'orum' is reserved for species named after couples. Plant species operate under slightly different rules because the gender of the species must match that of the genus.

President Barack Obama is one of the latest to be immortalized in the taxonomic record. And the list of famous plants, bacteria and animals ranges in the hundreds, if not thousands--from the sea of many, here are our 18 favorite famous namesakes.

Our current president's namesake is an orange-colored lichen. Discovered in California, the lichen was named this March. Kerry Knudsen, the lichen curator in the University of California, Riverside Herbarium, picked the name to "show my appreciation for the president's support of science and science education."

All three members of the former administration have a slime-mold beetle named in their honor. Wheeler is responsible for this choice, which was meant as a compliment. He said President Bush called to thank him for the gesture.

Wheeler named another slime-mold beetle in honor of the fictional Star Wars villain. The reasoning is that both Darth Vader and his namesake have broad, shiny heads and similar eyes.

In January of last year Wheeler and his colleagues named a whirligig beetle after legendary singer song-writer, Roy Orbison and his widow, Barbara Orbison. The beetle looks as if it is wearing a tuxedo.

The comedian, who has begged scientists to name species after him on The Colbert Report, has been honored twice--once with a spider and once with a Venezuelan diving beetle. The beetle species is notable for its male reproductive organs, which display a unique row of fine hairs.

Guitarist, free-speech advocate and prolific song writer Frank Zappa is a popular inspiration for a number of species' names. In 1987, a scientist named a species of jellyfish after Zappa because he wanted to meet the artist (his plan worked). Next, scientists named an entire genus of goby fish was after the musician, followed by an orb-weaver spider whose black markings reminded the researchers of Zappa's signature mustache.
(Photograph by Tim Whitby/Getty Images/Urs Thalmann)
In 2005, scientists named woolly lemur species after the British comic actor to recognize his work in lemur conservation. Cleese promoted lemurs in the film Fierce Creatures and the documentary Operation Lemur With John Cleese.

13. Kate Winslet: Agra katewinsletae
(Photograph by Jim Spellman/Getty Images/George Venable/Smithsonian Institution)
This ground-beetle species is named after Kate Winslet because of her role in the film Titanic. The scientific paper describing the beetle said, "Her character did not go down with the ship, but we will not be able to say the same for this elegant canopy species, if all the rain forest is converted to pastures."

14. Hugh Hefner: Sylvilagus palustris hefneri
(Photograph by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images/Rosanna Tursi)
Scientists named the marsh rabbit, found in the southeastern United States, after the founder of Playboy. Hefner's organization has donated money to support research about the endangered "bunnies."
(Photograph by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images/Lucinda Gibson/Museum Victoria)
This solitary female wasp reminded the scientists of the reclusive Garbo, who famously said, "I want to be alone."

16 and 17. Harrison Ford: Pheidole harrisonfordi (ant) and Calponia harrisonfordi (spider)
(Photograph by Ray Tamarra/Getty Images)
Two types of insects bear Ford's name. Scientists named a spider species after the actor to thank him for narrating a documentary for the London Museum of Natural History. The ant species was named after Ford to honor his conservation work.

18. Gary Larson: Strigiphilus garylarsoni

The creator of the Far Side comic strip, Larson's namesake is a species of owl louse. About the recognition, he wrote: "I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along."

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Top 18 Species Named After Famous People

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What do George W. Bush, Roy Orbison and Darth Vader have in common? All three have had new beetle species named after them. Naming species after celebrities is one seriously effective way for scientists to draw attention to taxonomy.

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Stratigraphy and paleontology of the Upper Ordovician rocks near Cincinnati, Ohio

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Life! It's everywhere on Earth; you can find living organisms from the poles to the equator, from the bottom of the sea to several miles in the air, from freezing waters to dry valleys to undersea thermal vents to groundwater thousands of feet below the Earth's surface.

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Index to a WEB-site relating to the type-Cincinnatian

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Resources for Teachers – Atlas of Ordovician Life

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Resources for Teachers – Atlas of Ordovician Life

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Earth looked very different long ago. Search for addresses across 750 million years of Earth's history.

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A Grub From Your Nightmares and the Beetle of the Gods: One and the Same | Featured Creature

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A Grub From Your Nightmares and the Beetle of the Gods: One and the Same | Featured Creature

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Central America, South America, and the Lesser Antilles. The beetle has also been observed as far north as Southern Mexico, in the states of Chiapas and Veracruz

Okay everyone, deep breaths. There's nothing to be afraid of. You're looking at photos of a baby, if you will. A gigantic, pale, wriggling baby of a Hercules Beetle ( Dynastes hercules); the most famous and largest of the rhinoceros beetles. The grubs of this enormous beetle grow up to 4.5 inches (110 mm) in length and weigh up to 120 grams. They spend 1-2 YEARS in this adorable form before transforming into a pupa, molting, and then emerging as an adult (shown below). These fat grubby babies can't be all that bad. I mean, check out that girl in the last photo - could she look any happier??!

via: animal-wildlife.blogspot.com

The Hercules Beetle is one of the largest beetles known on the planet, being exceeded in length by only two other beetles Macrodontia cervicornis and Titanus giganteus (posts on those ferocious beasties to come!)

It is considered the second strongest animal on earth, being able to carry 850 times its own body weight. That's the human equivalent of lifting a 65-ton object. When it gets into fights with other beetles it will pick up its adversary with its horns, fly straight up into the air, and then slam the other guy down on the ground, breaking its head. Nice move. Like I said, nothing to be worried about with these guys. Nothing at all.

via: beetlespace.wz.cz

If I haven't ruined your day enough, you can watch this video of Bear Grylls from Discovery's Man vs. Wild eating a Hercules Beetle larva to survive. I'd rather die. Literally if it were life or death - death, PLEASE!

[Warning - this is absolutely disgusting!]

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A Grub From Your Nightmares and the Beetle of the Gods: One and the Same | Featured Creature

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via: strangezoo.com © Novita Estiti © Novita Estiti Habitat: Central America, South America, and the Lesser Antilles. The beetle has also been observed as far north as Southern Mexico, in the states of Chiapas and Veracruz Status: No Conservation Concerns Okay everyone, deep breaths. There's nothing to be afraid of.

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The Greatest Animal War - Issue 17: Big Bangs - Nautilus

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The Greatest Animal War - Issue 17: Big Bangs - Nautilus

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Battles fought 542 million years before today helped fuel a blast that brought humans and most animals into existence. The great Cambrian Explosion was a period of unprecedented one-upmanship. Beastly claws crushed through thin skin, and soft-bodied creatures evolved shells shaped like scythes, sickles, and shields.

For about a billion years prior, the cells and genes that would later create animals were evolving in microscopic organisms who inhabited the oceans of Earth (see Deep Time). These essential molecular changes may only be inferred today because they're not preserved in fossils. The earliest traces of animals, about 580 million years old, appear soft, with no sign of claws, teeth, limbs, or brains. Then, within 54 million years (a relative blink but still, 270 times the duration of humans' existence thus far), most of the main animal groups around today originated. This rapid rate of increase in animal architectures has never since been repeated.

A simple species count does not do justice to the power of the Cambrian Explosion. Species have continuously formed over time. A new type of moth may have antennae that are furrier than its sisters; a new species of dinosaur may be distinguished by clawed wings and vicious front fangs. But a new phylum-a major branch on the tree of life, the upper-level ranking that separates an insect from a pterodactyl-is rarely born.

Most of today's 30 to 40 animal phyla originated in the Cambrian, and have persisted through time with hundreds of variations on a theme (see Explosion). Where the Cambrian Explosion saw a proliferation of architectures (picture igloos, cabins, skyscrapers, suburban houses, and grass huts), the rest of time has mainly been about remodeling existing forms (add a Jacuzzi, a deck, or a tin roof). The explosion of animal phyla in the Cambrian includes the category, the chordates, to which humans, reptiles, sloths, and fish belong. Chordates are united by a central bundle of nerve fibers running down our backs, supported by a stiff rod.

Source: The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity.

Why did it take so long for the explosion to happen? After all, life arose 3.5 billion years ago, and the first eukaryotic cells (the kind within our bodies) occurred a billion and a half years later. Beneath the surface, a lot was probably going on: DNA had to work just right for organisms with multiple cells to evolve, and then enable a diversity of forms for natural selection to play with. In the Cambrian, "[animals] got large, and biomineralized, and they started doing stuff they never did before," says Nick Butterfield, a paleontologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. "Suddenly," he says, "it just started to click."

Certainly, the environment around the time of the Cambrian encouraged the explosion as well. Oxygen had accumulated in the oceans after extreme ice ages occurred between 800 and 550 million years ago. With plentiful oxygen, animals could grow large and absorb the air they needed to breathe through their skin. (Lungs evolved later in time.) Vast real estate was also available, after the glaciations killed off the soft creatures that predate the Cambrian. Finally, other changes in dissolved oceanic gases helped. Calcium levels increased, which made possible the skeletons and shells of Cambrian marine life.

However, had the conditions been right but life passive, we might not be alive today. As soon as moving animals with mouths, nerves, and guts formed, they began to eat other animals-and their prey reacted. So ensued a biological arms race like the offensive and defensive escalation that occurs between warring nations (see Radiation). As predators gobbled up smaller prey, vulnerable animals landed on various means of protection: thick shells, spikes, and sophisticated methods of hiding. Their aggressors followed suit with specialized ways to track specific prey. Claws to smash shells, for example, or keen eyes to spot camouflaged prey. As University of California, Berkeley paleontologist Charles Marshall says, "It was a whole suite of arms races" (see Underwater Combat).

RADIATION: Once a novel group formed, individuals within the population evolved into different species with various adaptations. Members of Anomalocarida (middle left), for example, developed mouthparts of varying lengths and geometries, likely as different strategies to attack and shred smaller animals. Priapulids (upper left), marine worms that live in U-shaped burrows and grab prey with an extendable proboscis, developed an array of front-end adaptations to protect their exposed parts. Fleshy molluscs (upper right) evolved shield-like shells with projections to ward off attacks. Similarly, the shell shapes of brachiopods (lower right) came in a variety of textures and shapes that were likely defensive, but may have also been associated with feeding.

As for why an explosion such as this hasn't been repeated, one possibility is that most of the fundamental strategies for dealing with various interactions were discovered quickly, says Marshall, "and that's that." Another idea is that the number of combinations of genes acting together to produce novel animal characteristics have been exhausted. If these hypotheses are correct, the main limit is internal: The ruckus collapsed from within.

Source: The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity

Brooke Borel is a journalist and author. She's a contributing editor at Popular Science, and writes for The Atlantic, the Guardian, BuzzFeed News, FiveThirtyEight, and more. Her books are Infested: How The Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World and The Chicago Guide To Fact-Checking.

Additional Reading
Erwin, D.H. & Valentine, J.W. The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity Roberts and Company Publishers, Inc., Greenwood Village, Colorado (2013).

Marshall, C. Explaining of the Cambrian "Explosion" of Animals Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 34, 355-84 (2006).

"The Cambrian Explosion," Royal Ontario Museum, Burgess Shale: http://www.burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/science/origin/04-cambrian-explosion.php

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construction of animal biodiversity roberts

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The Greatest Animal War - Issue 17: Big Bangs - Nautilus

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Battles fought 542 million years before today helped fuel a blast that brought humans and most animals into existence. The great Cambrian Explosion was a period of unprecedented one-upmanship. Beastly claws crushed through thin skin, and soft-bodied creatures evolved shells shaped like scythes, sickles, and shields.

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Discover fun facts and quizzes all about animals and plants, and their natural habitats from the rainforest to the African savanna and the polar regions.
• C…

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For Educators - Resources - The Burgess Shale

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For Educators - Resources - The Burgess Shale

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For Educators - Resources - The Burgess Shale

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BBC Radio 4 - Natural Histories, Bat - Na na na na na na na na... Bat facts!

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BBC Radio 4 - Natural Histories, Bat - Na na na na na na na na... Bat facts!

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Bat babies

Most female bats have only one pup a year. Mothers can find their babies among thousands or millions of other bats by their unique voices and scents.

Bat lives

Bats live between 10 and 20 years. The oldest known bat lived for 41 years.

Bat trips

Bats "commute" along the same routes for years, following man-made lines like hedges or railway lines, which are conveniently straight.

Some bats migrate to warmer climate in winter. Others hibernate.

Bat stops

During hibernation, a bat's heart beats about 11 times per minute. When they are flying, bats' hearts pump over 1000 times a minute.

When hibernating, bats can survive freezing temperatures, even being encased in ice.

Bat vampires

There are three species of vampire bats and they all live in Central and South America. They are small - the commonest grows to about 9cm - and they mostly feed on the blood of farm animals and birds. They rarely feed on human blood.

A vampire bat doesn't suck blood but makes an incision on its host's skin. It has an anticoagulant in its saliva to help the blood flow and laps it up with its tongue.

Bat poo

Bat droppings, called guano, are one of the richest fertilisers.

Sources: BBC, New Scientist, British Museum, ResearchGate

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BBC Radio 4 - Natural Histories, Bat - Na na na na na na na na... Bat facts!

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Most female bats have only one pup a year. Mothers can find their babies among thousands or millions of other bats by their unique voices and scents. Bats live between 10 and 20 years. The oldest known bat lived for 41 years.

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The Cambrian Explosion - Origin of Animals and the Cambrian Explosion - Science - The Burgess Shale

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The Cambrian Explosion - Origin of Animals and the Cambrian Explosion - Science - The Burgess Shale

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The Cambrian Explosion

Uniqueness and Timing

The "Cambrian Explosion" refers to the sudden appearance in the fossil record of complex animals with mineralized skeletal remains. It may represent the most important evolutionary event in the history of life on Earth.

The beginning of the explosion is generally placed about 542 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period at the start of the Palaeozoic Era (the same time the Ediacarans disappear from the fossil record). While the explosion was rapid in geological terms, it took place over millions of years - the Burgess Shale, at 505 million years old, records the tail end of the event. The explosion is particularly remarkable because all major animal body plans (each more or less corresponding to a distinctive Phylum - Mollusca and Chordata, for example) appeared during this time, changing the biosphere forever.

The Cambrian Explosion and the Origin of Modern Marine Ecosystems

The rapid appearance of a wide variety of animals - particularly bilaterians - led to the development of radical new ecological interactions such as predation. Consequently, ecosystems became much more complex than those of the Ediacaran. As the number and variety of organisms increased, they occupied a variety of new marine environments and habitats. Cambrian seas teemed with animals of various sizes, shapes, and ecologies; some lived on or in the sea floor (a benthic lifestyle), while others actively swam in the water column ( nektonic).

The fundamental ecological structure of modern marine communities was firmly established during the Cambrian. By the end of the Period, some animals had also made the first temporary forays onto land, soon to be followed by plants.

Fossil Evidence
Mineralized Skeletons
The early record of the Cambrian Explosion is based on fossils - principally the appearance of mineralized skeletons and complex trace fossils. The typically tiny skeletal elements from this time are called "small shelly fossils." These constitute a highly varied assortment of sclerites, spicules, tubes, and shells, suggestive of several different types of animals. Unfortunately, many of the fossils remain poorly understood and are difficult to classify within known taxonomic groups.

© Swedish Museum of Natural History. Photos: Stefan Bengtson.

© Swedish Museum of Natural History. Photos: Stefan Bengtson.

© Swedish Museum of Natural History. Photos: Stefan Bengtson.

About 521 million years ago, trilobites made their first appearance in the Cambrian fossil record. These armoured animals had of three dorsal shelly parts - a cephalon (head), a segmented thorax (body), and a pygidium (tail section). Trilobites eventually became one of the most ubiquitous groups of invertebrate organisms in the Palaeozoic seas. They survived for almost 300 million years, and their fossils can be found from the Cambrian to the Permian periods.

© Royal Ontario Museum. Photo: David Rudkin.
Trace Fossils and the Cambrian Substrate Revolution
Trace fossils also become considerably more complex and diverse in Early Cambrian rocks. During the late Ediacaran, metazoans produced only simple horizontal traces on the surface of the sea floor. Starting in the Cambrian, animals began to tunnel vertically through the sediments and exhibit more varied behaviours, providing indirect evidence that mobile bilaterians with differentiated tissues and organs had already evolved.

© University Lyon 1. Photo: Jean Vannier.

The rise of these bilaterians permanently altered the nature of the sea floor, an event commonly referred to as the Cambrian Substrate Revolution.

During the Precambrian, the upper layers of mud, sand or silt on the sea floor remained relatively firm, thanks to bacterial mats that covered and stabilized the surface. These mats also served as a primary food source for Ediacaran organisms capable of grazing along the sea floor (see Kimberella). The burrowing animals of the Cambrian were able to tunnel down through the microbial mats, churning the sediment beneath and making it soupier. The burrowers may have started tunneling to access new sources of food (such as the sunken carcasses of planktonic organisms buried on the sea floor) or to escape predation by digging deep into the substrate.

The burrows opened up new ecological niches beneath the sea floor as water and oxygen could now get into the sediment layers. At the same time, bacterial mats were progressively destroyed and forced into more restricted habitats (i.e., in environments unfavourable for animals). This change in the substrate is thought to be partly responsible for the demise of the Ediacaran biota. Other factors (such as a change in water chemistry or an increase of predators) may also have played important roles in their extinction (see above).

The revolution turned the once-uniform sea floor into a heterogeneous patchwork, opening up a variety of new niches for animals - including those of the Burgess Shale - to exploit.
Burgess Shale-Type Deposits and the Burgess Shale Biota
Exceptionally well-preserved soft-bodied fossils of Cambrian age were first described from the Burgess Shale over 100 years ago. Today, dozens of Burgess Shale-type deposits with comparable assemblages of fossils have been found around the world. These deposits are usually found in Lower and Middle Cambrian rock layers, but may extend as far as the early Ordovician. These deposits are characterized by a similar mode of preservation called "Burgess Shale-type preservation".

The most notable sites are those located around the original Burgess Shale locality in Canada (the Walcott Quarry in Yoho National Park, British Columbia), along with the Maotianshan Shales of China (of which the Chengjiang in Yunnan Province is the most famous).

Other significant occurrences include the Kaili deposit in China and sites in the western United States of America (Spence Shale and Marjum and Wheeler Formations in Utah, Pioche Formation in Nevada), Greenland (Sirius Passet), and Australia (Emu Bay Shale).

Utah deposits

© Pomona College. Photo: Robert Gaines.

© Royal Ontario Museum. Photo: Jean-Bernard Caron.

© Pomona College. Photos: Robert Gaines (landscapes) and Royal Ontario Museum. Photos: Jean-Bernard Caron (fossil specimens).

View Transcript | View mp4 | View Lo-Res mp4

Sirius Passet

© Natural History Museum of Denmark (Geological Museum). Photo: David Harper.

© Natural History Museum of Denmark (Geological Museum). Photo: David Harper.

© John Peel

View Transcript | View mp4 | View Lo-Res mp4

Chengjiang

© Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology Chinese Academy of Science. Photo: Fangchen Zhao

© Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology Chinese Academy of Science. Photos: Maoyan Zhu

© Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology Chinese Academy of Science. Photos: Maoyan Zhu

View Transcript | View mp4 | View Lo-Res mp4

Kaili

© Royal Ontario Museum. Photo: Jean-Bernard Caron.

© Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Photos: Jih-Pai Lin.

Emu Bay

© University of New England. Photos: John Paterson.

© University of New England. Photo: John Paterson.

Compared to conventional fossil deposits, in which only the remains of more durable body parts are typically preserved, Burgess Shale-type deposits provide a much more complete picture of a normal Cambrian marine community. In modern marine settings, animals with mineralized body parts (shells, carapaces, etc.) account for only a minor component of the total diversity. This is also the case in most Burgess Shale-type deposits where the shelly assemblage usually represents a small percentage of specimens collected. Thus, without the fossilized remains of soft-bodied organisms, especially from the Burgess Shale, our knowledge of Cambrian ecosystems would be extremely limited.

Similarities among various Burgess Shale-type deposits around the world suggest the deep marine ecosystem was geographically uniform and evolutionarily conservative from the Lower to at least the Middle Cambrian (i.e., similar types of animal fossils are recovered through this whole interval, spanning at least 15 million years). The characteristic assemblage of organisms is often referred as the Burgess Shale-type biota.

Explaining the Explosion

Why did the Cambrian explosion happen when it did, and why was it such a unique event? While there is no current consensus among scientists, most researchers agree the explosion cannot be ascribed to a single, simple causal mechanism. The potential triggers can be classified in three main categories: environmental, genetic, and ecological. Deciphering the impact of each of these factors remains one of the most important challenges faced by palaeontologists today.

Was there an Explosion at all?

Very few organisms ever enter the fossil record; after death, their remains are usually completely destroyed and recycled. Animals with hard body coverings, such as trilobites, are much more likely to be preserved than those with only soft body parts. So the evolutionary development of mineralized shelly parts by different groups would be marked in the rock record by a sudden jump in fossil numbers. Thus, preservation bias alone could create the appearance of an "explosion" of new life forms at the beginning of the Cambrian.

When he published On the Origin of Species in 1859, Charles Darwin puzzled over the apparently sudden appearance of complicated organisms in the fossil record at the beginning of the Cambrian Period. He noted this could be used as an argument against his controversial new theory, which predicted a more gradual appearance of simpler organisms. At the time, Darwin pointed to the imperfection of the fossil record as his only defence, arguing complex animal life must have lived long before the Cambrian, but traces of that life had not yet been found.

The presence of large, soft-bodied, putative animals (problematic as they may be) in Ediacaran seas does indeed make the "explosion" appear less abrupt. But the fact remains that the Early Cambrian was a time of major change in marine animal communities and environments, with the rapid and unprecedented advent of disparate new body plans and novel ecological niches. By the end of the period, every major animal phylum was firmly established, and life after the Cambrian was radically different from what had gone before. So it is safe to call this event an "explosion" - it was crucial to the evolution of life on Earth as we know it.

Triggers of the Cambrian Explosion
Environmental Explanations
Before complex animals could evolve on Earth, there had to be an environment favourable for their survival. Researchers have examined a number of environmental factors that might have been instrumental in the evolution of new body plans, but the two strongest contenders are a rise in oxygen levels and the end of extreme glacial conditions.

Oxygen

Multicellular animals use oxygen to fuel their metabolism. At low oxygen levels, they don't function well ... without it, they cannot survive. Photosynthesis could have caused a rise in the amount of oxygen in the seas and atmosphere near the beginning of the Cambrian, allowing the evolution of larger, more complex animals with respiratory and circulatory systems.

However, there does not seem to be much variation in oxygen levels across the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary. Earlier increases might have triggered the evolution of large Ediacaran metazoans prior to the explosion, and a subsequent post-explosion rise in oxygen levels may have allowed animals to adopt more active, energy-intensive lifestyles such as swimming and hunting.

Glaciation

Another possible environmental explanation for why the explosion occurred when it did involves glaciers. Some researchers have suggested the entire Earth was covered with ice before the Cambrian explosion. (This is known as the "Snowball Earth" hypothesis.)

The ice would have limited the number of evolutionary niches for life in the sea, and blocked most of the sunlight on which cyanobacterial mats and algae depend. But once the glaciers receded, huge expanses would suddenly be opened for life: an ideal situation for experiments on different body plans. Unfortunately for the hypothesis, the last worldwide glaciation seems to have ended around 635 million years ago - nearly 90 million years before the first signs of the Cambrian explosion in the fossil record (which was followed by another major regional glaciation around 580 million years ago). Even if there is no direct triggering link between Precambrian glaciations and the Cambrian explosion, the post-glacial period was a crucial time in evolution. The appearance of the first large and complex multicellular organisms shortly after the return to a warmer global climate suggests that environmental conditions had become ripe for them to evolve.

Developmental Explanations

Some scientists have argued there was nothing in the environment during the Precambrian-Cambrian transition that was particularly unique. For these researchers, the answer to the question "why did the Cambrian explosion take place when it did?" can be found within the organisms living at the time. According to this approach, life first had to evolve the ability to develop new and diverse body plans.

Developmental genes in animals regulate how and when other genes operate to "build" the organism through its earliest life stages. Many important developmental genes are shared between widely-divergent animal groups. They are so closely shared that control genes from a lab mouse work perfectly well in a fruit fly. This conservation means those control genes must also have been present in the last common ancestor to both the fruit fly and the mouse. Very small changes in developmental genes can have a surprisingly large impact on the resulting organism. For instance, changes to the so-called hox genes in fruit flies can cause a fly to sprout an extra set of wings, or to grow legs where the antennae should be. From this, it could be argued that the fuse setting off the Cambrian explosion may have been ignited when the genome in the ancestor of all modern animals reached a level of complexity (including the evolution of hox-like developmental genes) sufficient to create radically new body plans. This would have provided more raw material for natural selection to act upon.

Such genomic changes might have been in the making long before the Cambrian, perhaps giving rise to the Ediacarans through a novel developmental pathway that was never repeated after their extinction. Following the Cambrian explosion and the evolution of the body plans that we know today, large-scale developmental change seems to have been "locked" into place, and no new body plans have appeared since.

Ecological Explanations

The explanation of the Cambrian explosion may lie not in the wider environment, or in the controlling genes, but in the complex ecological interactions between animals. The explosion may be a result of co-evolution, with different inhabitants of the Cambrian ecosystem being "pushed" to evolve by changes within that ecosystem.

For example, the emergence of predators might have stimulated the evolution of skeletalization (including mineralized plates) for protection, or swimming as a means of escape. Before predation became widespread, early "experiments" in different body plans could have briefly thrived because species interactions were probably more limited.

Moving into previously-unexploited environments would allow even a poorly-adapted animal to survive, perhaps with one of the "exotic" body plans seen in the Cambrian. New ecological niches - particular spaces in the ecosystem occupied by species - would have been created by organisms interacting with the environment.

Examples might include the evolution of zooplankton making organic material available for bottom dwellers, or the evolution of burrowing making new interactions with the sediment possible. But over tens of millions of years, as more organisms moved into these niches, the resulting competition would remove the less-fit body plans, leaving only the ancestors of today's phyla.

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The Cambrian Explosion The "Cambrian Explosion" refers to the sudden appearance in the fossil record of complex animals with mineralized skeletal remains. It may represent the most important evolutionary event in the history of life on Earth.

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UN sets out Paris-style plan to cut extinction rate by factor of 10 | Biodiversity | The Guardian

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UN sets out Paris-style plan to cut extinction rate by factor of 10 | Biodiversity | The Guardian

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Eliminating plastic pollution, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds, halving the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating $500bn (£360bn) of harmful environmental government subsidies a year are among the targets in a new draft of a Paris-style UN agreement on biodiversity loss.

The goals set out by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)to help halt and reverse the ecological destruction of Earth by the end of the decade also include protecting at least 30% of the world's oceans and land and providing a third of climate crisis mitigation through nature by 2030.

The latest draft of the agreement, which follows gruelling virtual scientific and financial negotiations in May and June, will be scrutinised by governments before a key summit in the Chinese city of Kunming, where the final text will be negotiated.

Alongside the 2030 draft targets, new goals for the middle of the century include reducing the current rate of extinctions by 90%, enhancing the integrity of all ecosystems, valuing nature's contribution to humanity and providing the financial resources to achieve the vision.

The Guardian understands that the summit, scheduled for October, is expected to be delayed for a third time due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is now likely to take place in Kunming in the first half of 2022, pending in-person preparatory negotiations that could happen in Switzerland early next year.

Basile van Havre, co-chair of the CBD working group responsible for drafting the agreement, said the goals were based on the latest science. He added that, if adopted, it could represent a significant shift in global agriculture.

"Change is coming [in food production]," he said. "There will be a lot more of us in 10 years and they will need to be fed so it's not about decreasing the level of activity. It's about increasing the output and doing better for nature.

"Cutting nutrient runoff in half, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds and eliminating plastic discharge: those are big. I'm sure they're going to raise some eyebrows as they present significant change, particularly in the agriculture."

Last month, Van Havre warned the world was running out of time for an ambitious deal at Kunming, which is part of a multi-decade ambition to live in harmony with nature by 2050.

Scientists have warned that humanity is causing the sixth mass extinction in the planet's history, driven by overconsumption of resources and overpopulation. One million species are at risk of extinction largely due to human activities, according to the UN's assessment, threatening the healthy functioning of ecosystems that produce food and water.

The plan includes the goal of protecting 30% of the world's oceans by 2030. Photograph: Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

In the latest set of 21 targets to be negotiated at Kunming, nature-based solutions such as restoring peatlands and adopting regenerative agriculture will contribute at least 10 GtCO2e (gigatonnes of equivalent carbon dioxide) a year to global climate crisis mitigation efforts - around a third of the 32 GtCO2e annual emission reductions needed as identified in the UN Environment Programme emissions gap report 2020 - while ensuring there are no negative impacts on biodiversity.

"We wanted to put [the contribution of nature] into an absolute number. We don't control what is happening on the climate change agenda but science is telling us this is what we can bring to the issues," Van Havre said. "The challenge is going to be how we do the carbon accounting."

Other targets include efforts to restore freshwater and marine habitats, maintain genetic diversity of wild and domesticated species, increase financial flows to developing countries, improve business disclosures on how their activities damage the environment and respect the rights of indigenous communities in biodiversity decision-making.

Prof Sir Robert Watson, who has previously led the UN's scientific organisations for climate and biodiversity, and has held various senior roles within the UK government, Nasa, the World Bank and the US government, welcomed the draft targets but cautioned that some were unrealistic and difficult to measure. Governments have failed to fully meet targets to stem the destruction of nature for consecutive decades, including the aims for the 2010s, which are known as the Aichi targets.

"Overall, the paper recognises and addresses all of the key issues, as did the 20 Aichi targets. The question is whether governments can set appropriate national targets and regulatory and legislative frameworks to enable the other actors, especially the private sector and financial institutions, to play their part," Watson said.

"I would have hoped that the paper would have explicitly acknowledged that the issues of biodiversity, climate change and land degradation must be addressed together and the goals, targets and actions of the three conventions should be jointly developed and harmonised."

The targets and goals must now be negotiated at in-person talks, where they will be updated after feedback from national governments. Once agreed, the final accord will be adopted by the 196 parties to the CBD.

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the CBD, said: "Urgent policy action globally, regionally and nationally is required to transform economic, social and financial models so that the trends that have exacerbated biodiversity loss will stabilise by 2030 and allow for the recovery of natural ecosystems in the following 20 years, with net improvements by 2050."

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

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UN sets out Paris-style plan to cut extinction rate by factor of 10

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Eliminating plastic pollution, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds, halving the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating $500bn (£360bn) of harmful environmental government subsidies a year are among the targets in a new draft of a Paris-style UN agreement on biodiversity loss.

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Hydrostatic Skeleton - The Infinite Spider

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Hydrostatic Skeleton - The Infinite Spider

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Have you ever heard the words: "You're spineless?" While meant as an insult, it's actually a compliment in biological terms. You probably already know that some animals, like humans, have internal skeletons (endoskeletons), and some have external skeletons (exoskeletons), like insects. But the story doesn't end there, nature is much more complex and diverse. There is an entire class of organisms that has a type of skeleton, called a hydrostatic skeleton. It is just like the name implies, a static skeleton made of fluid (hydro).

Hydrostatic skeletons rely on fluid (mostly water) that is always under pressure. This is because there is a a constant volume of fluid in an enclosed body space called the coelom or coelomic cavity. The fluid in the coelomic cavity resists compression, providing structure to the animal. Hydrostatic skeletons occur mostly in invertebrates like worms, the polyps (aquatic larvae) of some invertebrates, sea anemones, jellyfish, and other Cnidarians (jellyfish-like creatures).

Hydrostatic support is also found in the organs of many types of animals. Humans use hydrostatic fluid to support their tongue movement, starfish use hydrostatic support to move their hundreds of fluid filled tube-feet, squid and octopus us hydrostatic support to move their arms and legs, and many vertebrates like turtles and elephants have hydraulic/hydrostatic penises (spring loaded fluid filled chambers are much easier for a 2 ton elephant than climbing on top of his poor mate's back). Some invertebrates, like crabs and lobsters, switch between hard exoskeletons to a temporary hydrostatic skeleton when they molt, and while they are waiting to harden. This type of fluid pressurization gives them at least partial movement if they need to flee from predators while their shells are soft.

The key to all hydrostatic skeletons, and hydrostatic appendages, is that the shape of their body/appendage is cylindrical, with the body space being filled with fluid that can move around. This type of body/appendage plan is kind of a tube in a tube, or pretty much a tube of fluid surrounded by a tube of muscle.

So if a creature is filled with fluid how do they manage to not collapse like a sack of jelly, and how do they move about? Animals with hydrostatic skeletons rely on muscles to provide structure and support as well as movement. As you know, muscle fibers do not stretch on their own. In hydrostatic skeletons, muscles require an antagonistic system of contraction and relaxation by moving fluid around. Think of it sort of like when you squeeze a water balloon and the water moves from one end to the other, stretching the balloon's skin. Something similar happens in the bodies of animals with hydrostatic skeletons.

There are five main types of muscle arrangement combinations that help the animals move their fluid around, thus moving their muscles:

1. Muscles that ring the body cavity.

Earthworms are a great example of this muscle configuration. They belong to the phylum Annelid meaning literally "little rings." Their muscles form little rings around their coelomic cavity. Their body plan is kind of a tube in a tube, a tube of fluid surrounded by a tube of muscle.

2. Muscles that radiate out from the center of the body cavity, like a wagon wheel.

Sea anemones have this near the top of their heads, where their arms radiate out (so do squid and cuttlefish). Animals with full-body hydrostatic skeletons most often show radial symmetry. This means that if you can divide their body in many mirror like pieces (like spokes of a wagon wheel), unlike humans who can only be divided into two mirror-like halves.

3. Muscles that run longitudinally.

An animal must be able to contract muscles longitudinally so that it can move forward and back. This is why it also has muscles that run the length of the body or tube. The same is true for appendages like tube feet or tongues.

4. Spiraled or Criss-crossed muscle arrangement.

Many animals also have muscle fibers that are criss-crossed or in a spiral.. These arrangements provide strength and stability, as well as the ability to bend and torque the body.

Movement for animals with hydrostatic skeletons is all about elongation and contraction of muscles using the movement of body fluids. Whether it's the trunk of an elephant, the tentacle of a squid, or the movement of an earthworm it's all about fluid pressure. If you'd like to know more, check out this research paper from the Journal of Experimental Biology and William Kier. I would also suggest that you check out your local aquarium (especially in the winter when it's cold) to view sea anemones and other inverts that have these amazing types of support structures. Earthworms are also easy to observe. Next time you see one on the sidewalk take a moment to see if you can observe the vertical and horizontal muscle contractions of their body and how that relates to forward or backward momentum and fluid movement. It's quite fascinating once you know what to look for. You can also use small water balloons to demonstrate this idea to students or visitors on a trail hike or in a classroom.

Hydrostatic skeletons are also a fun way to integrate biology with a discussion about engineering and design. I enjoy teaching hydraulics and movement of simple machines using water. There's a great lesson plan online by "Instructables." https://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-Hydraulic-Machines/.

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Hydrostatic Skeleton - The Infinite Spider

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Have you ever heard the words: "You're spineless?" While meant as an insult, it's actually a compliment in biological terms. You probably already know that some animals, like humans, have internal skeletons (endoskeletons), and some have external skeletons (exoskeletons), like insects. But the story doesn't end there, nature is much more complex and diverse.

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Sheldon® Comic Strip: Daily webcomic by Dave Kellett

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Sheldon® Comic Strip: Daily webcomic by Dave Kellett

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Sheldon® Comic Strip: Daily webcomic by Dave Kellett

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Sheldon is a sarcastic, nerdy, family-friendly comic strip filled with pop-culture references and fun, random storylines. At its center is this weird, wonderful little family: a billionaire boy, his talking duck, & the grandfather that raises them bot.

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Association of Zoos & Aquariums | AZA.org

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Association of Zoos & Aquariums | AZA.org

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About the Association of Zoos & Aquariums

AZA is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of zoos and aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation. AZA represents more than 200 institutions which meet the highest standards in animal care, provide a fun and educational family experience, and dedicate millions of dollars to scientific research, conservation, and education programs.

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Association of Zoos & Aquariums | AZA.org

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About the Association of Zoos & Aquariums AZA is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of zoos and aquariums in the areas of conservation, education, science, and recreation.

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Online Research Resources Developed at NHGRI

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The NHGRI Dog Genome Project is run by Elaine Ostrander's Laboratory at NIH and focuses on the genetics of health and body structure in the domestic dog. We are particularly interested in the variation represented in individual dog breeds, which allows us to focus on locating genes involved in both canine cancer and the morphologic traits. Our research yields not only an understanding of how genes interact to create the modern dog breeds we see today and how we can keep our four-legged friends happy and healthy, but also insight into the health and disease of their two-legged caregivers.

Because of the breed structure, dogs display extensive variation in nearly all traits from size to coat color to behavior. There are giant and toy breeds; breeds with curly coats and those with straight coats; breeds with short snouts and those with longer snouts. Did you know overall body size varies forty-fold between large and little breeds? Modern dog breeds offer a great opportunity to understand the genetic basis of body plans and size in mammals.

In addition to differences in physical traits, breeds vary in disease risk. More than 350 inherited diseases have been described in domestic dogs, many of which predominate in a single breed or a small group of breeds. The NHGRI Dog Genome Project is working to find DNA variants that are associated with disease to help reduce their occurrence in affected breeds. Since many diseases in dogs are similar to disorders in humans, our findings will likely provide insight and new avenues of research for human health as well.

Would you like to interact with researchers at the NHGRI Dog Genome Project? We are always interested in the voluntary submission of DNA samples from all types of dogs as we have multiple studies underway at all times. We suggest you start by clicking through the material on this site and visiting our Facebook page.

You also can see our most recent publications, learn about events and/or dog shows we're attending, see research study plans, or ask questions to the experts in the lab.

Our Facebook page always has room for you to post pictures of your canine companions! Remember to keep it tasteful, and get permission to post pictures of dogs you do not own.

External links to non-federal sites does not constitute an endorsement by NIH or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the site. You will be subject to the destination site's privacy policy when you follow the link.

Last Modified: Wednesday, 19-Jun-2019 13:22:54 EDT

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Online Research Resources Developed at NHGRI

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The NHGRI Dog Genome Project is run by Elaine Ostrander's Laboratory at NIH and focuses on the genetics of health and body structure in the domestic dog. We are particularly interested in the variation represented in individual dog breeds, which allows us to focus on locating genes involved in both canine cancer and the morphologic traits.

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What a Newfound Kingdom Means for the Tree of Life | Quanta Magazine

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What a Newfound Kingdom Means for the Tree of Life | Quanta Magazine

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The tree of life just got another major branch. Researchers recently found a certain rare and mysterious microbe called a hemimastigote in a clump of Nova Scotian soil. Their subsequent analysis of its DNA revealed that it was neither animal, plant, fungus nor any recognized type of protozoan - that it in fact fell far outside any of the known large categories for classifying complex forms of life (eukaryotes). Instead, this flagella-waving oddball stands as the first member of its own "supra-kingdom" group, which probably peeled away from the other big branches of life at least a billion years ago.

"It's the sort of result you hope to see once in a career," said Alastair Simpson, a microbiologist at Dalhousie University who led the study.

Impressive as this finding about hemimastigotes is on its own, what matters more is that it's just the latest (and most profound) of a quietly and steadily growing number of major taxonomic additions. Researchers keep uncovering not just new species or classes but entirely new kingdoms of life - raising questions about how they have stayed hidden for so long and how close we are to finding them all.

Yana Eglit is a Dalhousie graduate student dedicated to discovering novel lineages of the single-cell eukaryotes called protists. While hiking in Nova Scotia on a cold spring day in 2016, she fell back from her friends to scrape a few grams of dirt into a plastic tube. (Such impromptu soil sampling, she said, is "a professional hazard.") Back in the lab, Eglit soaked her sample in water, and over the next month she periodically peeked at it through a microscope for signs of unusual life.

Late one evening, something odd in the sample caught her eye. An elongated cell radiating whiplike flagella was "awkwardly swimming, as though it didn't realize it had all these flagella that could help it move," Eglit said. Under a more powerful scope, she saw it fit the description of a hemimastigote, a rare kind of protist that was notoriously hard to cultivate. The next morning, the lab was abuzz with excitement over the opportunity to describe and sequence the specimen. "We dropped everything," she recalled.

Hemimastigotes represent one of a handful of Rumsfeldian "known unknown" protist lineages - moderately well-described groups whose positions on the tree of life are not precisely known because they are difficult to culture in a lab and sequence. Protistologists have used peculiarities of hemimastigotes' structure to infer their close relatives, but their guesses were "'shotgunned' all over the phylogeny," Simpson said. Without molecular data, lineages like hemimastigotes remain orphans of unknown ancestry.

But a new method called single-cell transcriptomics has revolutionized such studies. It enables researchers to sequence large numbers of genes from just one cell. Gordon Lax, another graduate student in the Simpson lab and an expert on this method, explained that for hard-to-study organisms like hemimastigotes, single-cell transcriptomics can produce genetic data of a quality previously reserved for more abundant cells, making deeper genomic comparisons finally possible.

The team sequenced more than 300 genes, and Laura Eme, now a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University, modeled how those genes evolved to infer a classification for hemimastigotes. "We were fully expecting them to fall within one of the existing supergroups," she explained. Lab members were instead stunned to find that hemimastigotes fit nowhere on the tree. They represented their own distinct lineage apart from the other half-dozen super groups.

To understand how evolutionarily distinct the hemimastigote lineage is, imagine the eukaryotic tree splayed out before you on the ground as a narrowing set of paths, which begin with places for all living groups of eukaryotes near your toes and converge far in the distance at our common ancestor. Starting at our mammalian tip, walk down the path and back into history, past the fork where our lineage diverged from reptiles and birds, past the turnoffs for fishes, for starfish and for insects, and then farther still, beyond the split that separates us from fungi. If you turn around and look back, all the diverse organisms you passed fall within just one of the six eukaryote supergroups. Hemimastigotes are still up ahead, in a supergroup of their own, on a path that nothing else occupies.

Fabien Burki, a biologist at Uppsala University in Sweden who wasn't involved in this study, was happy to see this result, but not entirely surprised. "It's a bit like searching for life on other planets," he said. "When we finally find it, I don't think we will be very surprised, but it will be a huge discovery."

Burki, Simpson, Eglit and many others also think we have much more of the tree of life to uncover, largely because of how quickly it's changing. "The tree of life is being reshaped by new data. It is really quite different than even what it was 15 or 20 years ago," Burki said. "We're seeing a tree with many more branches than we thought."

Finding a lineage as distinct as hemimastigotes is still relatively rare. But if you go down a level or two on the hierarchy, to the mere kingdom level - the one that encompasses, say, all animals - you find that new major lineages are popping up about once a year. "That rate isn't slowing down," said Simpson. "If anything, it might be speeding up."

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What a Newfound Kingdom Means for the Tree of Life | Quanta Magazine

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The tree of life just got another major branch. Researchers recently found a certain rare and mysterious microbe called a hemimastigote in a clump of Nova Scotian soil. Their subsequent analysis of its DNA revealed that it was neither animal, plant, fungus nor any recognized type of protozoan - that it in fact fell far outside any of the known large categories for classifying complex forms of life (eukaryotes).

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Dinosaur Images & Facts - The Online Database

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Dinosaur Images & Facts - The Online Database

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DinosaurPictures.org - Awesome Dinosaur Pictures

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High-quality dinosaur images, facts, and fossils for kids and educators. Easy to download or print!

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The Biology Corner - Resources for Teachers

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Resources for biology students that include worksheets, labs, and student activities. Find everything you need for your biology lessons here!!

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Absurd Creature Of The Week | Latest News, Photos & Videos | WIRED

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Absurd Creature Of The Week | Latest News, Photos & Videos | WIRED

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Absurd Creature Of The Week | Latest News, Photos & Videos | WIRED

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Find the latest Absurd Creature Of The Week news from WIRED. See related science and technology articles, photos, slideshows and videos.

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American Veterinary Medical Association - Home

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American Veterinary Medical Association - Home

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American Veterinary Medical Association - Home

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Scientific, news, business and other resources for veterinarians, including news, online discussions, veterinary events and CE, legislative tracking, and more.

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Schools & Teachers - Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden

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Schools & Teachers - Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden

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Schools & Teachers - Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden

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Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Home of the world famous hippo Fiona. Family friendly Zoo committed to inspiring visitors with wildlife and saving species.

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K-12 Students and Teachers : Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

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K-12 Students and Teachers : Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

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woods hole oceanographic institution (whoi)

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The tree of life gets a makeover | Science News

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The tree of life gets a makeover | Science News

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The tree of life might seem like a stable design, appropriate for indelible ink. Plenty of people think so. An Internet search for "phylogenetic tattoos" turns up some showy skin art.

But the branches are shifting. Since a radial diagram based on 1990s genetics inspired a rush for tree-of-life tattoos, technical diagrams of life's ancestral connections have been redrawn. And the simplified version of the tree of life memorized by schoolchildren for decades lags far behind what researchers depict today.

When Patrick Keeling at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver unveils a working scientist's current diagram for his students, most have never heard the names of the major branches. "Kind of fun," Keeling says.

In the new vision - based on increasingly sophisticated genetic analyses - people and other animals are closer cousins to single-celled choanoflagellates than to other multicellular organisms. Giant kelp that grow as wavering undersea forests off the California coast are closer relatives to single-celled plankton called diatoms than to multicelled red seaweeds or plants.

The old tree isn't exactly wrong. The kingdoms that used to crown its top - plants, fungi and animals - still exist. But they've moved. In the new diagram, the tree's former crowning glories shrink to mere side branches, three among hundreds, crowded by the vast diversity of complex single cells.

Biologists analyzing this treetop rarely use the word kingdom anymore. They talk of five or maybe seven bigger branches called supergroups. And the story of demoting kingdoms and introducing supergroups is far from over. A 2014 review noted five proposals for designating the most ancient stretch of supergroup branches, the bit that goes lowest on the new tree. A paper appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February described a new method for resolving this debate, and discussions continue.

Even as a work in progress, the new groupings offer benefits, such as help in searching for new medicines and insight into evolutionary puzzles such as the supposed wastefulness of sex. As the tree continues to morph, it will no doubt inspire new tattoos.
Story continues below graphic
Old school

Over time, drawings of the tree of life have changed to keep up with evolving ideas about how to categorize life.

In 1735, Swedish physician and botanist Carl Linnaeus published the first edition of his classification system for nature, incorporating three kingdoms: plants, animals and stones. (Stones never caught on.) In that early scaffolding, evolutionary relationships between organisms didn't matter. Linnaeus was just striving "to reveal God's creation to mankind in an orderly manner," says archivist Gina Douglas of the Linnean Society of London. Charles Darwin wouldn't nervously publish On the Origin of Species for another 124 years.

By 1969, ecologist Robert Whittaker openly waved aside some evolutionary distinctions when describing his ideas for kingdoms, in Science (see illustration below). His approach to the top of the tree (home to eukaryotes, which wrap their DNA in membrane-bound cell nuclei) would rule biology classrooms for decades. Yet his system is based only partly on evolutionary relationships.

Whittaker crowned his tree of life with three kingdoms of primarily multicellular eukaryotes sorted in large part by nutritional style: plants (capturing light energy), fungi (absorbing nutrients by contact) and animals (ingesting their food). He recognized a fourth kingdom of eukaryotes: the Protista. It was a hodgepodge of single-celled organisms, differing in forms and lifestyles but lumped together largely for convenience. He said as much, acknowledging that none of the classification systems he discussed "can be wholly satisfactory."

Today many scientists hope for biological categories that consist of a single ancestral lineage and all its evolutionary descendants. A tree of life built this way "actually changes how you interpret a lot of stuff," Keeling says. Much of biology rests on information gleaned from one organism and hypothesized to be true for its close kin. Identifying relatives is important. "If you've got the tree wrong, then you could be wrong about a lot of things," he says.

The challenge of getting that tree right looms sequoia-high, since so much of the diversity of life lies in complex microbes still unknown to science. Out of about 150,000 kinds of marine plankton detected during the Tara oceans expeditions, as reported May 22 in Science, researchers could genetically identify about a third only as some eukaryote. They couldn't place them in any known group.

Great idea, but

The early attempts to see what genetics could say about the tree of life seemed to work beautifully. But "science doesn't go in a linear path," says Andrew Roger of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, who entered the field during the tumultuous 1990s.

Those first genetics-based trees of life for eukaryotes were built by comparing variations in the gene for small subunit ribosomal RNA across species. The result looked believable, with plants, animals and fungi on big branches at the top. Lower down, in the zone for more ancient branches, sprouted some oddball parasites such as Giardia (the bane of hikers who drink untreated water), sexually transmitted Trichomonas and tiny microsporidia, which attack many animals.

Researchers had begun to wonder if these bizarre parasites and their relatives could be living relicts of an early, pivotal time in eukaryote history. The organisms had no obvious mitochondria, the organelles that serve as the cell's power stations. Perhaps the parasites had never had any mitochondria, Thomas Cavalier-Smith of the University of Oxford had suggested in 1983. This notion played off the idea championed by maverick biologist Lynn Margulis at Boston University in 1970 in The Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. She suggested that mitochondria came from a free-living microbe that some ancestor of eukaryotes had swallowed and put to work. Perhaps the parasites were relicts from before the Big Swallow.

To use these select parasites as glimpses of life before mitochondria "would be really, really interesting," says Dalhousie biologist Alastair Simpson. "It was a lovely hypothesis. But then it all went to hell."

One problem came when researchers expanded their analyses to look at more than one gene. Unexpectedly, says Roger, "we had different genes saying different things."

The potential unraveling of the parasites-as-relicts hypothesis had a special zing for Roger. He was in the middle of a Ph.D. project based on the assumption that the parasites came from premitochondrial times. "It was one of those cases when you're trying to work on the carpet that's being pulled out from under you," he says. "I thought it was pretty exciting."

Yes, he said "exciting." That view of eukaryote evolution based on analysis of a single gene "was in textbooks, and it was what many people had made their careers on," he says. "It seemed like if it was going to fail, it was going to be something big." He and his lab mates were going to be in on it.

Roger and his colleagues struck a blow to the old hypothesis by looking for genetic traces of bygone mitochondria lingering in the cell nucleus of select parasites. Even though mitochondria need some 700 to 1,000 genes to operate, only about 10 to 100 of them are inside the organelle itself. The rest reside in the cell nucleus and ship proteins to the mitochondria. The researchers detected some left-behind nuclear genes in supposed ancients, such as Giardia, Trichomonas and some microsporidia.

Various research groups eventually found the tiny, overlooked remnants of mitochondria themselves inside the fake relicts. The parasites looked very ancient only because their mitochondria had shriveled into hard-to-recognize bits.

Microsporidia, it turned out, were nowhere near being relicts. Examining a handful of genes, Keeling and other researchers demonstrated that the single-gene tree had put microsporidia in the wrong kingdom.

Microsporidia are "really nasty parasites, but fascinating," Keeling says. Their tough spores enclose a coiled tube. To infect a victim, they pump inward such a rush of water that the pressure blows the top off the parasite and the tube shoots out like a harpoon. As much as 100 times longer than the spore, the tube-harpoon punches into its prey. The parasite cell nucleus and other internal parts are injected through the tube into the victim. Although they have this elaborate equipment for infection, microsporidia are simple cells with genomes that are "tiny, tiny, tiny," Keeling says. Another misleading hint that they were ancient, simple creatures.

Keeling and his colleagues in the 1990s found evidence that the microharpooners didn't belong at the bottom of the tree. They were fungi, a more recent and much more metabolically versatile branch of organisms. Before this revelation of misclassification, researchers accepted the simplicity of microsporidial cells by assuming that complicated traits hadn't evolved in supposedly ancient, simple cells. After recognizing microsporidia as members of the fungal kingdom with all its elaborate metabolic tricks and lifestyles, biologists could see that microsporidia had been more complex at one time, but eventually lost fancy traits. "You have the exact opposite view of how they got to be the way they are, based on where they go on the tree," Keeling says. "The tree matters."

As evidence built that the supposed ancient parasites and their relatives weren't so ancient, "smart people worked out that the molecular trees were just wrong," Simpson says. The problem, now widely recognized, was the peril of "long-branch attraction."

Lineages that change a lot end up as long-branch lines in an evolutionary tree. Younger branches that change fast can by chance develop similarities to genuinely old branches. In simple analyses, they end up closer than they should be at the base of the tree, as if they've "attracted" each other.

Supergroups

All the challenges to the first genetic tree of life "left us with a mess," Keeling says. It became clear that the history of all eukaryotes cannot be reconstructed in any sensible tree based on one gene. "We ripped it all apart and put it back together. And it came together very differently."

Instead of a crown of multicellular groups rising over relicts on long branches, the organisms "coalesced in a small number of very large groups," he says.

The new arrangement, summarized in 2012 by Sina Adl of the University of Saskatchewan and colleagues in the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology, makes a fabulous mix of convergence and divergence. Animals are close relatives of fungi. Both are opisthokonts, along with some one-celled cousins. A Phytophthora potato pathogen, once famous as the "fungus" that caused famine in Ireland in the 1840s, is not a fungus at all. It belongs in the same supergroup as the giant kelp. Red and green seaweeds join plants in a distinct group called the archaeplastids.

These are big, deep-history groups, but don't call them kingdoms. "Alastair is allergic to kingdoms," Roger says of Simpson. The two collaborated on a 2002 paper enumerating supergroups instead.

Simpson wanted a term no one would treat as a formal rank. " 'Kingdom' has such gravitas," he says, not admiringly. Biologists assign kingdom rank based largely on subjective impressions, so he sees little information conveyed just by knowing something is a kingdom instead of some other rank in a hierarchy. To avoid the whole nonsense, he uses supergroup in a lighthearted nod to bands such as the Traveling Wilburys, which united (briefly) Bob Dylan, George Harrison and three other independently famous musicians.
Like Dylan and the others, each biological supergroup has its own illustrious story. The proposed one that Simpson found most surprising united all modern eukaryote groups that have algae with chlorophyll c. That's a huge crowd with no other obvious trait in common. Although chlorophyll c organisms seem so different at first sight, Cavalier-Smith suggested that they all descended from one eukaryote that swallowed another, which became its photosynthesizing organelle. "It seemed a very bold hypothesis," Simpson says.
Sequential swallowings are a big part of eukaryote history. Engulfers were themselves engulfed and in turn engulfed yet again. "Like matryoshka dolls," Keeling says.

Some genetic evidence now links three big groups to a single ancestral engulfment of chlorophyll c, Simpson says. Stramenopiles, with giant kelp and potato pathogens, now join alveolates and rhizaria (even though they have no chlorophyll c) as what's often abbreviated as SAR. Other chlorophyll c carriers are still under study, so the bold hypothesis might someday turn out to be right. "The really cool thing is, we still don't know the answer," Simpson says.

This and other eukaryotic mysteries may resolve more easily as geneticists refine a technique for deciphering DNA from one individual cell. Nature Methods called it " method of the year " for 2013.

The technique's possibilities intrigue researchers because single-celled species can be difficult or impossible to grow in the lab. Roger lovingly describes radiolarians, some of which build skeletons of strontium sulfate while others manage to eat multicelled animals. "Just beautiful organisms," he says, but "they're a real pain actually to work on." Single-cell DNA sequencing has helped in the study of bacteria, and papers here and there report results for eukaryotes. The technique revealed an interplay of chemistry between a termite-gut dweller and its own live-in spirochete bacteria in work published May 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Practicalities and beyond

Reconstructing all this evolutionary history can have practical implications. Early in Keeling's career, he investigated the peculiar discovery that malaria parasites have remnants of organelles that once carried chlorophyll. "Why would malaria have a chloroplast? They live in the dark," Keeling says. The researcher, Iain Wilson, who originally proposed the notion was dismissed for a long time as ridiculously wrong. But evidence grew, and today scientists agree that a certain small bit in the parasite left over from a photosynthetic past still has some function in the dark. That finding helps explain the effectiveness of some formerly mysterious treatments for malaria: The drugs attack chloroplasts.

A realistic tree of life can also change the way researchers look at more theoretical questions, such as how in the world such a supposedly wasteful and irrational process as sex evolved. Only one of two partners can bear young, halving productivity from the start. Or so goes a long-running thread of research and debate (SN: 2/14/09, p. 16).

Yet that furor is so multicellular. Simpson and Roger along with philosopher Maureen O'Malley of the University of Sydney in Biology & Philosophy in 2013 pointed out that the basics of sex must have evolved long before birds, bees or anything else multicellular.

In single-celled organisms, reproduction does not require sex, nor does sex always produce offspring. Two ciliate cells can meet, mingle genes and remain only two cells. The eukaryote tree abounds with single-celled organisms practicing the basics that combine to make multicellular reproduction possible. The alleged wastefulness of sex is really a question of why the peculiar form of sex tied to multicellular reproduction persists in a few outliers.

Useful as a good tree of life can be, Keeling objects to the idea that eukaryotes should be appreciated just for their utility. People enjoy animals and plants for their own sake. "A giraffe won't save your life, but people like giraffes," he says. To him, one-celled eukaryotes are Serengeti charismatic, just smaller. Some species have a structure - similar to camera-like animal eyes - with a cornea-like outer covering derived from mitochondria and a light-sensitive inner cup from an engulfed red-algal organelle, Keeling and colleagues reported July 9 in Nature. Several large dinoflagellate species hunt despite living inside a rigid shell. They push a stomachlike structure out a hole in the shell and digest prey larger than they are. Other single cells grow delicate, multipointed outer casings that eventually wash ashore, covering beaches with millions of miniature stars.

Knowing that the living world has so much invisible variety can change a person's perspective, says Fabien Burki, who works with Keeling at the University of British Columbia. The supergroup tree offers the little back-of-the-neck shiver-thrill of realizing that every tomato patch, termite gut or beach bucket of seawater holds life much vaster and stranger than imagined. Says Burki: "It's like the astronomers discovering there are planets around other stars."
This story appears in the August 8, 2015, issue with the headline "Strange Relations: Schoolroom kingdoms are taking a backseat to life's supergroups."

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The tree of life might seem like a stable design, appropriate for indelible ink. Plenty of people think so. An Internet search for "phylogenetic tattoos" turns up some showy skin art. But the branches are shifting. Since a radial diagram based on 1990s genetics inspired a rush for tree-of-life tattoos, technical diagrams of life's ancestral connections have been redrawn.