Mimicry

Practice Question

A recent New Zealand study compared the size, shape and pigmentation of hundreds of leaves of Pseudowintera axillaris (horopito, also known as the New Zealand pepper tree) and small Alseuosmia macrophylla (toropapa) plants, and found a match. Over a third of the leaves of the two species cannot be statistically distinguished from one another.  Toropapa were possibly eaten by moa before the arrival of humans quickly decimated the moa population.  Unless the plants are flowering or fruiting, the only fast way to tell them apart is to taste a leaf.  Horopito leaves a pungent, hot peppery taste and a numb tongue when the leaf is chewed, while toropapa is highly palatable.

Photo from: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/news/2016/06/making-a-mockery-out-of-our-native-plants

Name and describe the relationship between Pseudowintera axillaris and Alseuosmia macrophylla.  Discuss the adaptive advantages and disadvantages of the relationship to the two species of New Zealand flora, including any survival strategies they employ.

How I should answer:

- state relationship - mimicry

- describe relationship - toropapa is mimicing the horopito.

- describe relationship more - batesian mimicry

- define batesian mimicry

- How is it helpful or harmful ?

- adaptive advantages -

- disadvantages -

- survival strategies - horopito has chemical defenses against predators

Now I can write my answer:

The type of relationship that the Horopito and Toropara shows is mimicry. For this example the toropapa is mimicing the horopito. As it said on the paragraph, the Toropapa is tasty and the horopito tastes like hot pepper, the toropapa mimics the horopito because it is defenseless and needs something to protect it from its predators, like the moa. This type of mimicry is called Batesian Mimicry. Batesian mimicry is when a harmless organism's appearance mimics a dangerous organism's appeance, like the example of the Toropapa and the Horopito. For the Toropito it is helpful so that its predator can think it's the peppery taste plant and just moves on. It might also be harmful to them because the humans might think that it is the Toropapa and just cuts it off.

Re-write

In class today we were given a paragraph to type down also a list of words to rewrite that paragraph using those list of words.

Here is the actual paragraph:

A rabbit is active at dawn and dusk. It's normal activity is recorded in a lab for 6 days, then recorded in constant darkness for another 10 days. There is still a pattern to the rabbit's behavior but it starts 20 minutes later each day.

List of words:

Zeitgeber
Entrained
Biological Clock
Endogenous
Exogenous
Circadean
Circatidal
Phase shift
period of
Nocturnal
Diurnal
Crepuscular
Biorhythm
Free-running

My paragraph:

A rabbit has a particular time for its activity. It is active at dawn and dusk, which is called crepuscular. It can't be nocturnal or diurnal since it is active both dawn and dusk (sunrise and sunset). Its normal exogenous biorhythm was recorded for 6 days with the zeitgeber present which was entraining the rhythm.
When the rabbit's activity was recorded in darkness, the zeitgeber was removed and the activity pattern was changed. The phase shift happened when the zeitgeber was removed and its activity started 20 minutes later each day. This means that the biorhythm is Circadean in the period of 24 hours, not Circatidal because rabbits don't live at the beach or the ocean. LOL.
Because the zeitgeber was removed and its activity pattern still happened, it is endogenous, which means that the rabbit must have it's own biological clock. As the zeitgeber was removed, free-running  occurred, meaning that the rabbit's endogenous biological rhythm took over and made its own timing.

Debating Time

Today our Biology class did some debating on Euthanasia. I was in the team going against the idea of euthanasia. We were Blue Team. Here is the document that has our main points and rebuttle.

>Click here to see our argument plan

Thank you

Class of 4

Today was a very productive day in Biology.

Students became teachers and the teacher became a student. We were all given different topics to learn on our own. And after we learn for a good 20 minutes, we all gather around in one table and teach each what we learnt about. After we teach each other about our lessons, we give them our activities that we came up with. Me and BobbiGrace did Kahoot, Cherub made us a crossword and Lana was to define it and draw a diagram about it.

Cherub: Tropisms and Growth Responses
Tropisms are directional growth responses to external stimuli. It is directional growth because it grows either towards or away the stimuli. Tropisms are identified according to the stimulus involved, e.g. photo- (light), gravi- (gravity), hydro- (water), and are identified as positive or negative. I'll use sunlight as an example. When a plant is growing outside under the sunlight, the plant grows towards the sunlight, this is called POSITIVE PHOTOTROPISM.

BobbiGrace: Investigating Photo-tropism
Photo-tropism is when a plant is growing towards the light. Auxins promote cell elongation and are inactivated by light. But when a stem is exposed to light, auxin becomes unequally disturbed either side of the stem. When a stem is exposed to sunlight on the left, the auxin that is produced in the tip of the shoot, goes down on the right side. This causes the right side to elongate faster than the side that is exposed to sunlight. As this happens the plant bends towards the sun which is called positive PHOTOtropism.

Lana: Investigating Gravitropism
Auxin appears to have a role in the gravitropism response but it has a different effect depending on the presence of other plant growth regulators. 

Learning about Migration !

Tuesday 4th of May 2016

Migration is a journey that is often over long distances, often a year or once in a lifetime.
Homing is a short trip home after searching for food or mates.

Animals can navigate when migrating & homing through different ways.
Including: Visual Cues/Landscape, Star Compass, Magnetic and Sun Compass.

Visual Cues/Landscape:
- Landmarks, mountains, buildings, roads, forest, streams etc..
- Birds can use motorway etc. while migrating
- Digger wasp used cones as as visual where 'home' was.
- Change of land (development deforestation) may harm navigation & migration




Star Compass:

Using star for navigation.
Scientists put birds in a conservatory/star dome to see if it were really the stars that the birds were using to navigate. So one night the they put stars up in the conservatory lab. They noticed that the birds were hopping to the left side of their cages. The next time they swapped the stars around and the birds were hopping to the right side of their cages, which gave the scientists the idea that birds really do use stars at night to migrate. Turning out lights at night could help the birds see the stars clearly for them to be able to migrate.

Magnetic:
Some animals (eg. pigeons & salmons) have been shown to sense & navigate using the earth's magnetic field. Experiments with magnets on pigeons beaks showed their navigation became confused. So scientist put birds in a cage and had this magnetic technology that you can just switch on and off. Whenever it is switched on the birds would either fly to the left or to the right. When they switched the technology off the birds were shown to just be flying around and not knowing where they're flying to. Scientists also tried test where the magnets that attracted them to the earth's magnetic field were and so they attached some magnets onto their beaks and the birds were shown to be confused about where they're supposed to be flying. And they also found some in their backs.

Sun Compass:
- Sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
- Bees and the waggle dance !
Number of waggle = distance.
Angle of middle = angle to the sun
Bees uses the waggle dance to talk to each other about where their food is. So the number of waggle that the bees do is the distance where the food is away from them. And the angle of the middle is the angle of where the food is to the sun. Just confusing myself right there! haha




So we made posters about all of this and here is mine:

Introducing the NZ God-wit:

As you can see the map on the left shows the distance and stops that the God-wits migrate to and from. Also the map shows how it gets to their destination. The God-wits  are a large group of ling billed, long legged, bar-tailed birds. Their long bills allows them probe deeply in the sand for aquatic worms and mollusks. When god-wits prepare to migrate, they double their weight as the season changes and days get shorter. Because they are not needed for the journey, their stomach, liver and also kidney shrinks. As the journey begins, along the way many birds grow bigger flight muscles. Along the way, many of them stop to rest or to feed. Flying in formation helps them in a way so that they can use the minimum energy along the journey, also by travelling in higher air that is less dense. Some birds are led by experienced birds, and others just migrate on their own for the first time. This is called innate. Innate is a behavior that is not taught, it's in their genes, they all do it the same way and they all do it at the same time. So birds that migrate on its own is an example of innate behavior.

Thank You for reading my blog!
Enjoy the rest of your day
God Bless

Class of 3

Hi All 😊😊

Yesterday there were only three of us. Bobbi, Lana and Me. Also with Miss Wells.

First, we did some learning about PHOTOtropism in the roots. And then she allowed us to work on our assessment and just try finish it up for a grade. Land and Bobbi did their assessment, but I and Miss Wells did our own work on the board. Miss Wells would draw pictures on the board and then I would have to caption it. Here it is:

Just read the caption so you'll know what I learnt that day.


Thank you for reading my blog 😊😊 Have a good day/night

Auxin

Hi, All 😃😃

On the last day of March, we had a special visitor. She just came into our class and sat in the back and just observed how we use our netbooks and how useful it is to our learning.  We were so grateful as a class that she learnt something from our little lessons and I'm pretty sure she had fun. But anyways let me get to what I have to actually talk about.

So on Thursday, our first task was shared to us by our Biology teacher. The class of  8 was divided into two groups, 3 boys and 5 girls. We had to watch a video first and then answer the questions that were shared to us by our Biology teacher. When we finish that task we had to make a presentation out of dough.

Here it is: