Biology 101, Chapter 4, The 5th Day – Avian Creatures

In addition to Biology 101:
►Birds
• Apologia Biology Exp. 16.1, Bird Embryology (Video below that I plan to use for this.)
• Apologia Biology Exp. 16.2, Bird Identification (2 parts to this)  We will do everything at home and used this worksheet.
- List of Birds of North Carolina, grouped by category
• 10 videos by BBC on The Life of Birds - These total over 8 hours.  We will watch #2, "Mastery of Flight" and use this accompanying worksheet for assistance in choosing a bird for a report the next day.
Be aware that there is evolutionary content in these videos.

►Insects
• Apologia Biology Exp. 12.2, Insect Classification
--A helpful link - BugGuide.net  Look through these pages, or click an insect in the box on the left.
--Tips for collecting and mounting insects at Applie's Place.  Scroll to the list of requirements this blogger gave her class.  There are several more links below that as well.
Another way to do the Killing Jar.

►Additional websites:
- Beneficial Insects
- What's that Bug?

The Avian Kingdom

(1) The Life of Birds: Mastery of Flight
►Full length video - this is Day 1 of a 2-day assignment.
Embedding disabled, please watch here.
--accompanying worksheet to use in assistance for choosing a bird for a report the next day.
Please ignore the references to adaption.  How would animals live before adapting???



(2) Birds are in the class Aves (AY-vees).
Think of aviation to help you remember how to pronounce aves.  =)
How wings work:




(3) Bird Flight animation




(4) Webcams
►Usually in the spring at Norfolk Botanical Gardens, there is a live web feed of Eagles and Eaglets.  Watch a couple of videos and read more at Sahm-I-Am.  Also video from previous owl webcam.



(5) Bird Embryology (Apologia Biology Exp. 16.1)


►Not for the faint of heart -- Atlas of Avian diseases; study bird embryos.



(6) AMAZING!  How weaver birds make their nests.




(7) How an Egg is Made




(8) Honey Guide Bird

Flying Invertebrates

Insects have an exoskeleton rather than an outer skeleton.  So they do not have a backbone which means they are invertebrates.
They also have jointed legs, which means they are arthropods.  (pod = foot, kind of like pedal.)

(9) Class Insecta



(10) Grasshoppers breathe through spiracles, tiny holes along the abdomen.  There is one on each section.  In this video, they look like little dark dots.
Order Orthoptera




(11) Complete and Incomplete Metamorphosis
Embedding was disabled for these videos, so click on a link to watch.
►If you click the first link, they will continue to play in order.  11-12 minutes total.  (They are numbered like they are in the playlist.)

Complete Metamorphosis: 4 stages:  egg, larva, pupa, adult
Simply amazing!!!
63. Monarch butterfly laying eggs
64. Monarch caterpillar growing
65. Monarch caterpillar changing into chrysalis
66. Monarch butterfly metamorphosis

►Monarch or Viceroy? (not a video)
How to tell the difference between a Monarch butterfly and a Viceroy?
The difference is the additional black line that goes across the hind wings of the Viceroy.  Monarch butterflies are bitter because of what they have eaten, so birds will avoid Viceroys as well as Monarchs, not realizing they are different.

Incomplete Metamorphosis: 3 stages:  egg, nymph, adult
67. Preying Mantis  Order Orthoptera
68. Preying Mantis life cycle

(12) Whirligig Beetles

(13) Life Cycle of Honey Bees
Order Hymenoptera:  Ants, Bees, and Wasps ("social" insects - live in colonies)




(14) Grasshopper Dissection



Extras if you need more.
►Another grasshopper dissection.  Part 1,  Part 2. (about 14 min total)
Just glanced at it, but seems to have more vocabulary, so it depends on what exactly you are wanting to learn about insects.

►Insect External and Internal Structures and Functions (16 min)

Biology 101, Chapter 3, The 5th Day - Aquatic Creatures

In addition to Biology 101:
►Vertebrates:
• Apologia Biology Exp 13.1 Perch Dissection (another great image)
--We ordered our dissection kits from Home Science Tools.  Our worms in the kits were mostly flattened, so I requested new ones and received them in just a few days, round and plump!
• Write a report on any Aquatic Creature (also draw and label)

►Invertebrates:
• Apologia Biology Exp 12.1 Crayfish Dissection
--Crayfish dissection worksheet and appendage table
--another image of crayfish internal organs
--also see Applie's class's crayfish dissection
--See our crawdad the girls found shortly after doing this chapter in Apologia.
• Write short reports on organisms in Subkingdom Protozoa: amoeba, euglena, and paramecium (also draw and label)
--How to pronounce euglena. Also type in paramecium, etc.
• You can also make edible trilobites!  We didn't since half of my class had already done that in General Science M8.

►Links to more dissections

I assigned the written reports above to take the place of the field trip and essay assigned in Biology 101.  We also allow 4 weeks per chapter instead of 3 weeks.




(1) Terminology

• Dorsal - referring to the back, or it might seem to be the top if the animal is not upright like a human, but it is its back.  Like a dorsal fin on the back of a fish.
• Ventral - referring to the front, or belly-side of an organism.
• Anterior - in front of, or the end that contains an organism's head.
• Posterior - in back of, or the end that contains an organism's tail.

(Source)

A shark has two dorsal fins.  This means they are on its back.  There is an anterior dorsal fin and a posterior dorsal fin.  The anterior is toward the head and the posterior is toward the tail.
Something can also be "anterior to" another body part, meaning it is in front of it, and "posterior to" another body part would mean it is in back of it.

Aquatic Vertebrates

(2) Osteichthyes (bony fish)
Perch anatomy - exterior and interior




►You can also watch Shark anatomy!



(3) Agnatha (jawless fish) are a type of cartilage fish.
Lol, Agnatha talked so much, her jaw deteriorated.
One type of Agnatha is the Lamprey.  ewwww! 

Aquatic Invertebrates

Invertebrates have an exoskeleton rather than an outer skeleton.  So they do not have a backbone, thus the name invertebrate.

Some invertebrates are also arthropods.  Arthropod means jointed leg or foot.
All the creatures below are invertebrates.  Which of these invertebrates are also arthropods?


(4) Crayfish Anatomy part 1
Please ignore the evolutionary references.




(5) Crayfish Anatomy part 2




(6) Crayfish Swimming, trying to catch food.
Growing up, I always called these crawdads.  =)




(7) Lobster




(8) Shrimp




►See baby shrimp being born around 0:50 seconds.


(9) Beautiful Crab at Costa Rica

►Watch this crab run!



"Barnacles (see images) are crustaceans that have jointed legs and shells of connected overlapping plates. Instead of crawling after food, they glue themselves to rocks, ships, pilings  abalones, and maybe even whales and wait for food to wash by. When barnacles are under water or when a wave washes over them, they reach out little feathery barbed legs to strain out plankton and absorb oxygen."
(source)

(10) Barnacles "sweeping" the water to gather any plankton floating about.



(11) Amoeba Dinner!
Watch this amoeba eat.  It uses its pseudopod locomotion to move and to engulf its prey.  To begin with, everything moves slowly until the prey realizes it is caught!



►See more images of amoebas!


(12) Euglena, from a pond




(13) Euglena's movement by whirling its flagella, and by drawing its cytoplasm into the central region of the cell, then re-extending itself forward.




(14) A paramecium moves by beating the tiny "hairs" on its edge.  These are called cilia.
Paramecia have an oral groove where they take in food.  You can see the oral groove around 40 seconds when it starts turning over several times.
The little "blobs" throughout are food vacuoles.  After a paramecium takes in food through the oral groove, it pinches off a little section with the food inside it.  This is now a food vacuole, and it will move to other parts of the paramecium, taking food to its whole body.



(15a) Octopus Camouflage!  This is incredible!


(15b) Watch it in reverse


Octopus videos from ScienceFriday.com

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Page 1 has some of the Multimedia CD Roms for $1.99.  To my knowledge, these have things like short animated illustrations and vocabulary pronunciation.
Check around and see what else you find!  =)

See here the different components of Apologia, and which ones are necessary and which are supplemental.

Biology 101, Chapter 2, The 3rd Day - Plants

In addition to Biology 101:
• Grow a bean plant, learn about tropisms
• Dissect a Flower (worksheets here or here)
• Apologia Biology Exp. 14.1 - Leaf Collection and Identification (worksheet, guide)
• Apologia General Science Exp. 10.4 - Turgor Pressure (scroll down) (directions/worksheet)
• Transpiration - Apologia Botany p. 96 or 138.  Place a baggie over a leaf of a well-watered plant that is in the sun.  Close baggie with clothespin or twist-tie.


(1) Plant Cells


All cells have a cell membrane.  But outside a plant's cell membrane, there is also a cell wall.  
The cell wall of plants is made of cellulose.  
There are three structures in a plant cell that pertain specifically to plant cells.

1. cell wall (for stiffness of the stem; also keeps cell from bursting if the central vacuole continued to fill)
2. large central vacuole (for turgor pressure)
3. chloroplasts (for photosynthesis)

(2) Turgor Pressure
The large central vacuole and the cell wall work together to create turgor pressure.
As the water vacuole fills, it presses against the cell wall, making the plant become more rigid.  This rigidness is known as turgor pressure.
This plant regains turgor pressure as the vacuoles in each of its plant cells fill with water.
(459 shots, made every 30 seconds for 3h 45m. He added about 1½ cups of water.)



The food coloring in the water shows that the water traveled up the xylem, filled the celery's plant cell vacuoles, and caused the plant to become rigid with turgor pressure.

(3) Plant Parts


►But what about a daisy?  Where is the stigma?  Where is the stamen?
Read this article (scroll to Inflorescence and then The Magic.)
Then look at these microscopic images.



(4) Leaves
►See several labeled images of leaves here.

►A great site that classifies leaves.  (Also see the paragraph about bark)
• Scroll down and see what kinds of fruits there are, including nuts.
• These are important to think about when classifying leaves in class.

These links will help with leaf identification.
► Keys to Leaves of Virginia, (4H) I've got my leaf; let's get started! (interactive)
► Auburn University Horticulture Dept, Plant Identification Resource (interactive)

The microscopic structure is what you cannot see with the naked eye.

►Image of what is inside a leaf (scroll down)

Structure of a Leaf



Parts of a Leaf




(5) Stems
Xylem and Phloem  (zy' lum, flow' um)
♦Xylem and phloem tubes are together in a vein, or a vascular bundle.
If you look at the bottom of a stalk of celery, you will see these.  They look like strings, and both xylem and phloem are bundled together, like wires through a power cord.
♦ The xylem transports water and minerals UP the roots to the leaves where the chlorophyll is located, in order to make food for the plant.
Xylem is dead tissue.
♦ The phloem transports food (sugars) back DOWN the leaves, then to all the rest of the parts of the plant.



(6) Transpiration - how water and minerals are transported up the xylem (which is dead tissue) and how moisture exits the leaves through the stoma so that more water and minerals are pulled up through the xylem.
 stoma/stomata, guard cells, vacuoles


►Remember that plants have specialized structures while algae do not.  In other words, plants have structures that each perform their own specific task.
(1) Roots take in water and minerals.
(2) The stem transports these to the leaves.
(3) The leaves carry out photosynthesis.



(7) Tropisms

Stimulus:  something causing a response.

Nastic Movement vs. Tropism

►Nastic movement is a preprogrammed response, and any direction of movement is independent of the direction from which the stimulus comes.  No matter from which direction the light comes, the plant's response is the same each morning -- opening of leaves and petals.  Or if a plant's leaves close when you touch them, it does not matter which direction the touch is from.  The plant is preprogrammed to this action.
Nastic movement is not a growth response.
It does not grow in a direction as a result of a stimulus.

►Tropisms depend on the direction of the stimulus, and therefore, can change.
Tropisms can be a growth response or a movement response.
• Growth of a plant toward sunlight is phototropism.  The sunlight is the stimulus.
• Heliotropism is when plants bend toward the sun as it moves across the sky.  This is a movement response that is a tropic response since it depends on the direction of the stimulus.
--These are tropisms if the plant moves or grows toward the light, rather than just opening its leaves as in nastic movement.   
• Thigmotropism is a growth response to touch, like a vine touching a branch will grow around the branch.  The direction of growth depends on the direction of the branch.  The branch is the stimulus.
Tropisms are growth or movement responses, but both depend on the direction of the stimulus.
• Gravitropism (also called geotropism) works in two ways.  Roots grow down, and shoots grow up.  The shoots growing up is not simply a result of phototropism, because they will grow up even in the dark.  The seeds that germinate and sprout upwards while still covered with soil are proof of this.  This is called negative gravitropism, since they grow in the opposite direction of gravity.  Roots growing down is positive gravitropism.
• Hydrotropism is growth toward water.  This would most likely be roots growing toward water.

(7a) Examples of nastic movement (not a growth response like a tropism can be)
Nastic movement because it does not matter from which direction the bug comes.
This is a preprogrammed response to happen when the hairs are touched.   


(7b)More nastic movement
Nastic movement because it does not matter from which direction the leaves are touched.   
This is a preprogrammed response to happen when touched.    


(7c)Nastic movement of a Moon Flower, also called an Evening Primrose
It opens near dusk and it takes about 30 to 60 seconds for one to open. About 10 to 20 open each night on a plant and they all fade by noon the next day.
♦ This is in real time, not a time lapse.
Nastic movement because there is nothing in any direction that prompts this behavior.  
This is a preprogrammed response for this to happen at night. 

LOL, dh asked about pollination, and I told him they're open until noon the next day.
He laughed and said they only serve breakfast.  =)


Tropisms can be a movement OR a growth response.
(7d) Phototropism, and a little about gravitropism 
These are growth responses as a result of the direction of the stimulus - the sun, or gravity.

(7e) Phototropism and Heliotropism

Watch these bush beans as they grow toward the sun. (phototropism)
Then watch as shadows move over them - they ALL lean toward the sun. (heliotropism)
(Video was shot over a 24 hour period.)
Growth and Movement response is a result of the direction of the stimulus - the sun.


(7f) Thigmotropism - response to touch (what the plant touches, not what touches the plant - like a human or animal)
Growth response as a result of the direction of the stimulus - the pole.  The vine would not grow this direction if it were not for the pole.
LOL at the spider that comes down at 0:12  =D

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