3rd Blog Post

Endangered Honey Bees 

In these two weeks I have made progress with my 20 time project by gathering more information on my topic and trying to piece it together. I haven't had any setbacks so far in my project. My next steps in the process are hopefully to visit a honey bee farm. I found some relatively close and plan to contact them so I can go to the farm and ask them questions about their bees to gather much more information. With my plan to visit the bee farm I can use my knowledge about endangered honey bees and spread the awareness to my family and friends. My goal for this 20 time is for people all around to be aware of the importance of honey bees and how crucial their survival is to the world. 

Unit 8 Reflection

Unit 8 Reflection 

In this unit I learned about constant change. I learned about the difference between artificial and natural selection. The difference between those two is that natural selection is the process of weeding out traits in a population that do not help the individuals and the result is change (evolution) over time. While artificial selection is when humans select traits from a populations variation that they want. The relationship between natural selection and evolution is throughout evolution species evolve   and select the best traits for themselves and their environment. Allele frequency is how often a gene appears in the gene pool. Charles Darwin stated that there will always be winners and losers and that not all offspring will survive. There are always going to be species will better traits for their environment that will "win" because they can survive. 

In this unit we had two really good labs, the Hunger Games lab  & Bird Beak lab . These labs demonstrated natural selection and they were really beneficial for me because it was a real life situation and we were able to talk and discuss the lab which really helped.
(To the left are the graphs from the labs)

Some questions I still have are: What will happen when we get close to reaching our planets maximums carrying capacity? How has the planet survived after so many drastic events?

Since last unit when we learned about how to be more assertive I have tried to contribute more of my ideas to group projects instead of just listening to others. In the geologic timeline project I have discussed my thoughts on how we can present our information on the timeline and made sure everyone in the group had something to do. I still need to improve with my assertiveness skills but I have improved so far. I think I can gain more confidence and be more assertive with more group projects and contributing my ideas. 

Geologic Timeline Individual Reflection

Geologic Timeline Individual Reflection

While working on the timeline, I learned about many events in Earths history. Some of the biggest events were the first living organisms as microscopic bacteria in the precambrian era, Earths largest extinction in the end of the permian period, and the birth of the dinosaurs in the Triassic period. The scale of earths history really surprised me because when we were working on the timeline about 90% of the timeline was the whole Precambrian era. When we were labeling the other periods and era I realized that even though those eras themselves were very long their size didn't even compare to the size of the Precambrian era. When I learned about the events in earths history it is really hard to believe how much this planet has gone through and how well it has survived. Earth has gone through a lot of mass extinctions and change in dominant mammals that have just went extinct. A question that I have is how did scientists gather all this specific information because it was so long ago, but it is amazing that they did. 

 

http://news.wisc.edu/oldest-bit-of-crust-firms-up-idea-of-a-cool-early-earth/

Hunger Games Analysis

Hunger Games Analysis

1. In this lab we stood around in a circle and when Mr. Orre blew the whistle we all turned around and as quickly as we could we collected all the food we could will our phenotype. (Shown below)
2. The phenotype best at capturing the food was knuckles because it was the easiest for most people and a lot of knuckles kept on mating with knuckles which increased their population. 
3. The population did evolve because just after the first round the stumpys were gone. The stumpys came back but very few were there and they never dominated because their phenotype was the hardest to get food. 
4. In this lab the factors that were random were where people were standing in the circle before the whistle blew and what offspring people had. Factors that were not random were where the food was distributed and who mated with who. The effect on evolution this had was the population. 
5. The results would have been different if the food was a different size because then the phenotypes that worked best could be different. If different phenotypes were leading then the population size would be different.
6. Yes the results would differ if there was no incomplete dominance because then the stumpys would have never been able to come back and there would have been more knuckles and pinchers. 
7. The relationship between natural selection and evolution is throughout evolution species and have picking out traits that work best for them and their environment. This lab demonstrated natural selection through evolution because through the trials the stumpys had left because their phenotype was no as useful as the other two.
8. Strategies that individuals and groups adopted through the experiment were that they used their sense of sounds.
9. In evolution, species evolve with better traits for their environment and food. For example in this lab the pinchers and knuckles were dominating because their phenotype was best with the kind of food they had, but if the food was larger then possibly many factors would change and possible stumpys would dominate. In ecology the species with the best traits survive and one's whose traits do not benefit them die off. 
10. Questions I still have are: What would happen if we had more rounds? Would the stumpys eventually die off? When is the food placement random and when is it not?

 Pinchers to the left, Knuckles to the
right, & Stumpys below.

2nd Blog Post/Endangered Honey Bees

Endangered Honey Bees

Throughout these two weeks I have gained a lot more knowledge about my topic. I learned about the factors that negatively affect honey bees and why they are endangered. The things that I learned about myself are that I am much more interested in my topic especially after I learned more. I think some of my setbacks are that honey bees are not dangerously endangered and a lot of the information I find is repeated throughout sites. But luckily all of the information and facts I found are on highly trust able sites like Times and Washington Post. My next steps in the gather more information and research what living conditions honey bees live the best in. The information I have learned so far can be spread around throughout the community so people understand the honey bees are so crucial to the Earth and how we can save them.

Bird Beak Lab Conclusion

Bird Beak Lab Conclusion

Hypothesis (claim)	Evidence of this occurring?	Explanation of this evidence: Why did this happen?
Individual with better traits leave more offspring	They collected the most food because their beak was best for that	Their beak was easy to quickly grab food and large quantities of it too
Populations begin to look more like the winners	The birds with the beaks that collected the most food had the most kids	This happened because the most food a bird had resulted it the more offspring they had

In this lab we asked the question that which bird beak will collect the most food and have the most offspring. We found that the tweezers was the beak that had the most offspring. They have 22 in total. Second most was scissors and they had 15. The last two were binder clips and spoon with 11 and 8. The tweezers was in the best beak for that specific society with that food because it beak all the other beaks with its quick grabbing beak. This data supported our claim because individuals with better traits leave more offspring. 

Two errors that we had in our experiment were that some of the food was more collected in a specific area and should have been scattered around the table better. Another error we had is that I noticed that some people started before others and people ended at slightly different times. Due to these errors, in the future I would recommend to have a timer at every desk so people know exactly when to start and finish so the data is more accurate and also before every new round scatter the food equally around the middle of the table so everyone has a fair start. 

This lab was done to demonstrate how traits effect offspring and which traits are best for an environment. From this lab I learned about artificial and natural selection in "real life" which helps me understand the concepts better from the vodcasts. Based on my experience from this lab I can now understand how animals are genetically altered to fit their environment and society and there are always going to be winners and losers.