Friday, April 8, 2016

Principles of Ecology Chapter 13 & 14

Ecology

Relations among organisms and their interactions with their environment is known as Ecology. 

Biodiversity: term used to describe the variety of life found on Earth.



Individual = 1 Species
Population = Many of the same speices
Community = Different populations (Biotic Factor = living)
Ecosystem = Various populations along with abiotic factors (non-living) coexisting.
Biome = Many ecosystems (Tundra, Tropical Rain Forest, Desert, etc...)
Biosphere =  Many biomes

 

Biotic vs Abiotic

Abiotic Factors are non-living. Ex: rocks, soil, water, wind, temp.
Biotic Factors are any living. Ex: Plants, Animals, Fungi, Bacteria, and Protists.






Producers = get their energy and produce their own food by use of non-living resources. They are also called autotrophs.

Some organisms use chemicals to make their own food. This is called chemosynthesis.

Consumers = organisms get their energy from living or once living resources such as plants, animals, fungi, bacteria. They are also called heterotrophs.

There are 4 Types of Consumers

  • Herbivore = organisms that only eat plants
  • Carnivore = organisms that only eat meat
  • Omnivore = organisms that eat both plants and meat.

  • Decomposers /Detritivores = organisms that eat decaying matter and recycle it back to the environment.



Quiz on Intro to Ecology

Law of Conservation of Energy
Energy can not be created or destroyed it can only be transferred from one form to another.

Our Sun is our source of energy. It provides direct and indirect energy to all life on earth.



What would happen to the population of snakes if the cricket population decreased?

What about the owl population? 

In Ecology we see interactions among populations mainly through Food Chains and Food Webs

Food Chains show how the organisms are related with each other by the food they eat. The arrow indicates the direction energy travels. They are very simple.





Food Webs are a combinations of Food Chains interacting with one another. They are very complex.

Food Chain Video



Only a 10% of energy is transferred from organism to organism while the rest is lost to heat. TEN PERCENT RULE



Each organism in an environment can be placed in what is known as a Trophic Level, usually represented as a pyramid.

In a Trophic Level Pyramid each level symbolizes a level of nourishment in a food chain.











Biomass Pyramids indicate how much of a certain organism there is in a specific area. Producers occupy most of the land biomass.

Many times certain areas can only sustain so much life. This is known as Carrying Capacity (how much capacity a certain area can sustain). 

So when population of consumers increase there are changes in the environment that can lead to deaths in populations until order is restored.







Carrying Capacity

BrainPop Energy Pyramid


Food Fight

Carbon Cycle

Nitrogen Cycle

Water Cycle

Organisms interact with their environment differently. Within a certain ecosystem, organisms tend to occupy their own space called a niche.

A habitat is a place organism lives and a niche is how an organism lives within a habitat.

There are 3 factors that are included in a niche:
1. Food = the type of food it eats, how it competes with others for food, and where in the food web it falls into.
2. Abiotic Conditions = temp. and water a organism can tolerate.
3. Behavior = when the organism is active

Sometimes organisms occupying different niches will compete for food and drive other out of their area.
There are 2 ways organisms interact with each other and their environment.
1. Competition: each compete for resources.
2. Predation: organisms hunting and killing others for nutrients.

Battle at Kruger

Some prey upon others in different niches when hunting. This is called predation, the act of preying upon another organism with the intent to kill and eat it.

Other organisms will interact with each other in a process known as known as symbiosis.

There are 3 forms of 
Symbiotic Relationships:




1. Mutualism = (mutual) both organisms benefit from the relationship. Ex: Bees and flowers.




2. Parasitism: (parasite) one organism benefits while the other gets harmed in the process. Some parasites ultimately kill the host. Ex: leech and ticks.











3. Commensalism: one organism benefits while the other is no affected or  not bothered. Ex: Sharks and remora.


Review Video

Succession: is a sequence of changes that recreates a damaged community or creates a new community in an area that was not inhabited before.

There are 2 types of succession:

Primary Succession: This type of succession might begin on cooled lava, after a volcano erupts or it might begin on bare rock that is exposed when a glacier melts. May take longer to develop a habitat.



Secondary Succesion: is the regrowth of a damaged ecosystem in an area that still has healthy soil. Restores the habitat much faster.



Chapter 19 Protists & Fungi

A protist is a eukaryote that is not an animal, a plant, or a fungus. They are found in the Domain Eukarya, Kindom

However, Protists can be animal-like, plant-like or fungus-like.


Euplote
The many groups of animal-like protists are often called protozoa. Animal-like protists like the Euplotes are heterotrophs; organisms that consume other organisms, all animal-like protists are single-celled, while all animals—no matter how simple—are multicellular 



a.) Cilia, are short, hairlike structures on the cell surface. Cilia help an organism to move and capture food. 

b.) Some protozoa move by changing shape, and forming pseudopods. A pseudopod


c.) flagella are tail-like structures that help single-celled organisms move. 

Some Protists that below to the genus Plasmodium cause disease like the Human Malaria.

Photosynthetic plantlike protists are called algae  such as the Pediastrum seen to the right. Although these protists do not have roots, stems, leaves or other plant tissue they do have have chloroplasts. Plantlike protists may be either single celled, colonial, or multi cellular


Funguslike protists, such as slime molds or water molds, decompose dead organisms. 
Slime molds are protists that have both funguslike and animal-like traits. They are common on dead leaves and under logs.Water molds are protists that are made of branching strands of cells. They are common in freshwater habitats. Many water molds are decomposers, but some are parasites of plants or fish. 





Fungi  eukaryotic organisms that get food by breaking down organic matter and absorbing the nutrients, reproduce by means of spores, and have no means of movement.

fungal cell walls are made of a substance called chitin (KYT-uhn) this substance is also found in the shells of insects, but is not found in plants


  • Primitive fungi The simplest type of fungi are called the primitive fungi. Most live in the water and have spores with flagella that help them to move. 
  • Sac fungi These fungi all form a sac that contains spores for reproduction. The yeasts that are used to make bread rise and as the source of the antibiotic penicillin are both sac fungi. 

  • Bread molds Most bread molds get their food by decomposing dead or decaying organic matter. However, at least one group of bread molds gets food through a symbiotic relationship. Mycorrhizae (my-kuh-RY-zuh) are fungi that live in a mutualistic relationship with the roots of certain plants. These fungi change nitrogen into a form that plants can use. The plant gets usable nitrogen. The fungus gets food and a place to live. 

  • Club fungi These fungi have fruiting bodies shaped like clubs. This group includes mushrooms, rusts and smuts, which are two types of fungi that cause diseases in plants. 







Mycorrhizae (my-kuh-RY-zuh) are fungi that live in a mutualistic relationship with the roots of certain plants.  
















  • Fungi reproduce sexually and asexually.


  • They reproduce asexually by producing spores in sporangia, which are spore-forming structures at the tips of their hyphae.


  • Other forms of asexual reproduction include budding. 

**Sexual reproduction of a fungi occurs when two mating cells from hyphae of different strains of fungi can mate by 

fusing together  and forming a spore stalk.

  •  Fungi as Decomposers, they can break down dead material, such as leaves, wood, and animals. Through decomposition, fungi return nutrients such as carbon, nitrogen, and minerals back into the soil. 



A lichen (LY-kuhn) is a mutualistic relationship between a fungus and algae or photosynthetic bacteria.









  • Some fungi can be pathogens, or organisms that cause disease. Fungi can cause disease in animals, including humans. For example, fungi cause athlete’s foot and ringworm.

  • Fungi as Mutualists, Some insects also have mutualisms with fungi. A certain type of ant that lives in Central and South America, called the leafcutter ant, actually grows fungi in a type of garden.




Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Chapter 20 Plant Diversity


20.1 Where did they come from ? Plants are thought to have evolved from GREEN ALGEA....Charophyceae

Likely Characteristics that came from these protist are...

a. Multicellular bodies which led to the development of cells and tissue. 
b. Cells with small channels to communicate to other cells.
c. Reproduction that involves sperm fertilizing an egg.  
Image result for algae          Image result for land plants





Earliest plant fossil date back to 450 mya.
Based on the image above, what type of plants evolved most recently? 

Adaptations of Land Plants

1. Retaining Moisture: Plants need to be able to retain moisture. A CUTICLE IS A WAXY, WATERPROOF LAYER THAT HELPS HOLD IN MOISTURE THROUGH TINY HOLES CALLED STOMATA.

2. Transport Resources: Plants must be able to get water and nutrients using a VASCULAR SYSTEM: "pipelines" that carry resources up and down to different parts of the plant.

Composition: Two networks of hollow tubes.
a. xylem: carries water and dissolved minerals UP from the roots to the rest of the plant.

b. phloem: carries the products of photosynthesis food throughout the plant.


 


3. Growing Upright: Plants need structure to support their weight it comes from a material calledLIGNIN: Which is a material that is found in the cell walls of plant tissues.

4. Reproduce on land: Not all plants need free standing water to reproduce Pollen and seeds are adaptations that allow seed plants to reproduce free of water.  Pollen is a sperm forming structure. 

Male reproductive part stamen.
Female reproductive part stigma.






20.2 Classification of Plants  
Seedless Plants and Seed Plants
The first kind are seedless non vascular and vascular plants.(earlistest ones).  
Mosses and their relatives are seedless non-vascular plants.
Like all non-vascular plant,mosses need to live in moist environments. 
Image result for seedless nonvascular plants         Image result for seedless nonvascular plants
Hornworts 1-4 cm                          Thallose Liverworts
Club mosses and ferns are seedless vascular plants.
                 
     Club moss <=20CM                        Fern 10-25M
Still need water for reproduction,can stand off the ground? 
(tropics and subtropics.)
Image result for club moss spores     Image result for club moss spores
 ferns and mosses produce spores instead of seeds to reproduce.

Image result for club moss spores         Image result for club moss spores


Seeded Plants 

The second kind are the plants produce seeds. These are classified on whether or not seeds are enclosed in a fruit. 

A seed is a storage device for a plant embryo.

They include the Cone-bearing plants and Flowering plants and have advantages over their Ancestors

  • Can reproduce without free standing water.
  • Produce pollen which can be carried by wind or animal.
  • Their seeds nourish and protect embryo.
  • Seeds allow plants to disperse to new places.

How are fruits formed from flowers?

Where do pears come from?

Banana Flower


Examples BELOW. 

      Image result for FRUIT PLANT

Pine trees                                              Papaya


 Image result for pinetree with pollen                          Image result for ginkgo biloba tree
Pollen carried by wind.               Ginko Biloba                                      

GYMNOSPERM: seed plant whose seeds are not enclosed in fruit. 

Image result for gymnosperms    

ANGIOSPERM: is a seed plant that has seeds enclosed in some type of fruit. Common name flowering plants.

Image result for avocado plant

Questions

  • What are the habitat requirements for seedless non-vascular plants?
  • What are the evolutionary advantages of vascular system?
  • What are the evolutionary advantages of seeds vs spores?

20.3 Diversity of Flowering Plants  
  • More than 300 species
  • classified as TWO types: 
Monocots: Flowers that part in multiples of three.
Image result for monocots flowers examples 6 Petals


Dicots: Flowers that part in multiples of four and five.
Image result for Dicots  5 Petals

Image result for dicots examples     Image result for monocots     Image result for monocots


Image result for monocots    Image result for dicots
Image result for dicots


Plants can also be identified by their leaf shapes.







Arrangement of leaves





Seed Plants 

22.5 PLANT HORMONES AND RESPONSES
  
What are hormones?
 
Hormones are messengers in one part of the 

organisms that 

stimulates or suppresses the activity of a cell in another part.

When are they released?

They are released in response to internal or external 

environments and regulate plant function.

Plants can respond to light, touch, gravity and Seasonal 

Changes.


Light ) Phototropism: tendency of plant to grow toward 

light.

Image result for phototropism     
Phototropism Video 

(touchThigmotropism: when a plant moves or grows in 

response to touch.

     Image result for climbing plants

Venus flytrap can close in less than a second  its native to wet and muddy areas of North and South Carolina.

Image result for climbing plants    

Mimosa Pudica

Thigmotropism Video

(Gravitational pull) Gravitropism: plants  up or 

down growth in response to gravity. 

Mechanism where the shoot grows up towards soil and the 

root down towards the soil. Regulated by a hormone called auxins.


Image result for gravitropism picture  



Gravitropism Video 
(lenght of day and nightsPhotoperiodism: A response to 

the changing lengths of day and night .
Plants react to shorter days and longer nights by hibernating.
Plants, like animals, want to save energy when possible. Ex: In winter months they react by shutting down to use less 
energy.

Ex: LEAVES FALLING during the shorter days in the winter.



Photoperiodism Video

Plant Growth BrainPop