AP Biology!

This is Carson, my beagle mix. Carson is composed of a beagle and a white and black tick hound along with some other unknown species. Carson wasn't made in a test tube, but technically Carson is a genetically modified animal. People choose which animals to breed with specific genes needed in or to fulfill a specific need. Although he isn't mixed with other animals, people chose which specific genes they wanted.

This is a female and male Red River Hog (These had produced offspring before).This is a representation of breeding behavior. Red river hogs breed seasonally, so that the young are born between the end of the dry season in February and the midpoint of the rainy season in July. The oestrus cycle lasts 34 to 37 days. The male licks the female's genital region before mating, which lasts about five to ten minutes. Gestation lasts 120 days.

 This is lettuce. This is also referred to as a long-day plant. A long-day plant is a plant that flowers only being exposed to light periods longer than a certain critical length, as in summer. Spinach, lettuce and some wheat are long-day plants. Scienctist saw that these plants grow more efficiently in the light than in the darkness. Although the species in the long day plant category may not flower when there is a lot of darkness, the specific amount of hours that each plant needs of darkness varies with each species of plant.

 This is a pine needle. These plants are examples of modified leaf of a plant. This plant adapted to its changing surroundings to preform other functions besides photosynthesis and transpiration. Instead, a pine needles are long, slender, tubular or triangular unlike other plants.

 This is a picture of a pine cone or a gymnosperm cone.  Male cones tend to be smaller than the female cones and tend to hang further up a tree. The female cone produces seeds, while the male cone produces pollen. Once the female cone is fertilized, the zygote grows into an embryo that is encased within a seed.

 This is a beautiful example of a vestigial structure. Vestigial structures are structures of organisms that have lost most of the original function present in its ancestor species. Hidden in the picture, behind some of the trees is grass. Grass often has small, undeveloped structures that resemble those of some flowering plants. As we known, grass is not considered a flower, but it still has some resemblances to pass evolutions.

This is an example of a predator. Predators are those animals that live by preying on other organisms for food. This shark is a carnivore which means it eats nothing but meat. Sharks with travel 1,000s of miles to find a good hunting ground. Most of shark kills are seals are fish. Sharks are also scavengers. Sharks can smell blood from miles away, if a shark picks up a whiff of blood, let us say from a dead whale, the shark will travel to the location of the dead shark and feast for days.

 This is an example of an heterotroph. Unlike a plant which is a autotroph, an heterotroph is unable to synthesize its own organic carbon-based compounds from inorganic sources, hence, feeds on organic matter produced by, or available in, other organisms. So, heterotroths receive their enegy from consuming other things instead of producing their own food.

 Although you can't see it, although I felt the repercussions of it, these flowers have pollen. Pollen is a sperm for plants and each grain of pollen has two sperms. The pollen is transferred from flower to flower by pollinators (like bees) and help the flowers reproduce. After the sperm fertilizes the eggs within the ovaries of the female flower, zygote develops into the plant embryo, and the fertilized endosperm becomes a food source. Pollen is a sticky substance due to the nectar from the flower from the pollinators.

 This plant is an excellent example of dominant vs. recessive phenotype. The yellow and orange flowers were the exact same species of flower but were different colors. As I walked the zoo, I saw that the yellow flowers were more dominant than the orange. I figured that the yellow flowers received the dominant gene (Ex. YY) and then the orange flowers received the recessive genes (Ex. oo). The genetic material, which determines traits is called the genotype. The genotype is considered homozygous when an individual has either two dominant alleles. The genotype is considered heterozygous when an individual has one dominant allele and one recessive allele.

This is a very bad picture of a spider. This spider has a segmented body, meaning that its body is a division of an animal's body plan, whereby the body is divided into functional units. The three sections are the head, thorax and abdomen. Arthropada, chordata and annelida are also more examples of phyla with segmented bodies.

 This leaf is an example of an adaption of a plant. Plants have adaptions to help them survive (live and grow) in different areas. This plant adapted by making it's leafs pointy and sharp, so animals couldn't eat or kill it. Plants that make adaption changes normally are located in specific areas that caused the change. For example, this plant might have adapted to sharp leafs because of the amount of deer we have in the area.

 This flower and bee underwent a coevolution change together. Coevolution is used to describe cases where two (or more) species reciprocally affect each other's evolution. Coevolution is likely to happen when different species have close ecological interactions with one another. Like this bee and slower who have been helping each species from giving nectar to pollination.

 This is a picture of grass I found in my backyard. Grass is different from other plants because it has a rhizome. A rhizome is a continuously growing horizontal underground stem that puts put lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals. Basically, grass has a giant, connecting stem which is completely different from trees and flowers.

 On the beautiful lavender is a bee, or a pollinator. These are the most recognized pollinator. Bees typically are fuzzy and carry an electrostatic charge. These features help pollen grains grip to the bees bodies. As the bees fly from plant to plant, the pollen helps fertilize female plants. Bees have a special structure on their leg known a scopa which is made up of a thick, plumose setae.

 This is a picture of a seahorse. This seahorse has adapted to its previous environment, and has mutated to adapt which helps the seahorse survive in its environment. Due to th helpful nature of the mutation, it is passed down from one generation to the next. This seahorse has adapted by mutating its look similar to that of a plant. If a predator was nearby, the seahorse would be camouflaged well enough not to be seen.

 This frog is trying to maintain, a balance called homeostasis. Homeostasis is the ability to maintain a constant internal enviromnment in response to environmental changes. It is a unifying principle in biology. This frog in particular, is maintaining homeostasis by regulating its temperature. Frogs are ectotherms, meaning they get their heat from external sources. By switching from land to water helps maintain that safe and constant temperature, maintaining equalilibrium.

 This is a slug, or a detritivore. They are also known as detritus feeders/eaters, an are a heterotroph that obtain nutrients by consuming decomposing plants and animals, and often feces.  By doing so, slugs and worms contribute to decomposition and the nutrient  cycle. They are distinguished from other decomposers, such as fungi, bacteria and protists, which are unable to ingest discrete lumps of matter, but instead live by absorbing and metabolizing on a molecular scale.

 This is a starfish located at the Ripley's Aquarium in South Carolina. Starfish have a radial symmetry, which means that this starfish has a basic body plan in which the organism can be divided into similar halves by passing a plane at any angle along a central axis. Fun fact too, starfish are known to regenerate their body parts if they lose a limb.

 This is an gymnosperm leaf (pine). Fun fact, "gymnosperm" means "naked seed". The seeds od a gymnosperm are not made in specialized chambers unlike the seeds of angiosperms. Pine trees belong to a specific group of gymnosperm called conifers. Instead of having a specialized chamber for seeds, like fruits and flowers, pine trees have cones to help them reproduce.

 This is my skin or otherwise known as the epithelial tissue. Epithelial tissue is a sheet of cells that covers a body surface or lines a body cavity. Two forms occur in the human body; covering and lining epithelium- forms the outer layer of skin and lines the open cavities of the digestive and respiratory systems.

 This is an autotroph. An autotroph is an organism capable of synthesizing its own food from inorganic substances using light or chemical energy. Green plants, algae, and certain bacteria are autotrophs. These are the producers in a food chain and food web.

 This is a population of starfish. In biology, populations are groups of individuals belonging to the same species that live in the same region at the same time. Population density is a measure of the number of organisms that make up a population in a defined area, and both these terms go hand in hand.

This is an exoskeleton of a cicada. An exoskeleton is an external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to the internal skeleton of an human, per say. Some of the larger kinds of exoskeletons are known as "shells". These help protect the soft endoskeleton of a bug.

This bundle of plant and flowers represent a niche. A niche refers to the way in which an organism fits into an ecological community or ecosystem. Through the process of natural selection, a niche is the evolutionary result of a species' morphological, physiological, and behavioral adaptions to its surroundings. This plant has adapted due to the multiple leaves it has, which means its amount of sugar is higher than most plants. Also, this plant is in South Carolina and it sometimes doesn't rain there and its blazing hot, and somehow this plant has managed to survive without rain for more than a month (I asked a staff member at the zoo about the plant and it hadn't rained there in awhile) without dying.