Leave it to Beavers

Watch, Leave it to Beavers and respond to the following prompts:

1. Why are beavers important to an ecosystem?
2. How would an ecosystem with beavers be different if the beavers were gone?
3. Why are beavers important to humans?
4. A keystone species is a species whose presence and role within an ecosystem has a disproportionate effect on other organisms within the ecosystem.  Why are beavers a keystone species?

A World Without Mosquitoes

Read A World Without Mosquitoes and answer the following questions.

1. How many people are infected with malaria every year worldwide?  How many are killed?

2. According to the article, mosquitoes have been around for more than 100 million years, so what is one problem with simply wiping them out?

3. What types of animals depend on mosquitoes and their larvae as a food source?

4. There are several different opinions given about what would happen if we simply eradicated mosquitoes from the planet.  What do you think would happen?  What evidence do you have to support your view?

How Much DNA do we Share with Other Living Things?

Click on the link and see if you can figure it out.

Kudos to Dre for asking the question!

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/125-explore/shared-genes

Great Transformations Video

Click on the Link and watch episode 2 of Great Transformations and answer the following prompts...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D34Q1zGMxDI&list=PL025876CC77CDD9AE&index=5&edufilter=g07LWVBkc46piKtOeijISA

1. What are the scientists studying in this video?  What types of evidence are they looking at? (List as many as you can.  This question is ongoing throughout the video.)

2. What evidence supports the evolutionary history of whales? (List as many as you can.  This question is ongoing throughout the video.)

3. What is a transitional form?  What is an example of transitional form?

4. Why are scientists studying spines?

5. Why are scientists interested in different ways animals travel?

6. What evidence can you discuss that shows connections of all living things?  Give specific examples.

7. Give examples of signposts or key species in the “tree of life”.

8. What allowed major events in life history?

Whale Kiosk - Evolution of Whales

Follow the link below:

http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/whalekiosk.html

Lamarke vs. Darwin Two Theories of Change

I think you will find the following links useful in answering the writing prompts.  The assignment is due Friday 9/13.

Evolution writing prompt!

Respond to the following writing prompts.   Be sure to include supporting details.  Be specific.  You need to write between a half a page and a page to answer this.  You may use the textbook CH 4 and/or the internet as a resource. 

1.     Who would have agreed with the following statement? “Elephants stretched their noses and passed on the long nose trait until their descendants had a long nose called a trunk.”

2.     Who would have agreed with the following statement?  “Elephants with longer noses were able to survive and have more offspringthan elephants with shorter noses.”

3.     Who would have agreed with the following statement?  “Elephants’ noses have changed over time.”

4.     Compare and Contrast Lamarke’s Theory and Darwin’s Theory

Links:

Lamarke:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_09

http://necsi.edu/projects/evolution/lamarck/lamarck/lamarck_lamarck.html

Darwin:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/educators/course/session2/explain_c_pop2.html

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/history_14

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/10-examples-natural-selection.htm