Scientific Names

Today I gathered the full scientific names of 5 different animals that I thought were very similar.Scallop: Eukarya, Animalia,Mollusca, Bivalvia, Ostreoida, Pectinidae, Argopecten, A.irradians. Man of War Jellyfish: Eukarya, Animalia, , Hydrozoa, Siphonophora, physaliidae,Phsalia, Piphysalis.Cuttlefish: Eukarya, Animalia, Mollusca, Cephalopoda, Sepiida, Sepidae,Metasepia,M.pfefferi. Nudibrank: Eukarya, Animalia, Mollusca, Gastropoda, Nudibranchia, Facelinidae, Cratena, Peregrina. Lobster: Eukarya,Animalia, Anthropoda, Malacostraca, Decapoda, Nephropidae, Homarus, H. americanus. I chose these animals because I thought that they would be very closely related since they are all invertibrates from the sea. After taking a closer look, the animals are not as similar as I thought. All have been placed under the domain, Eukarya and the Kingdom Animala. The most closely related animals in the list are the Scallop, Cuttlefish, and Nudibrank which is evident because they all share the phylum,Mollusca. Mollusks are the largest phylum of marine animals and 23% of marine animals are classified under the Mollusca phylum. The Scientific Names of the Man of War Jellyfish and Lobster were not what I expected them to be. Although they seemed similar, they both come from the two completely different phylums, Cnidarea (which contains over 10,000 different species) and Anthropoda(which represents an animal that has an exoskeleton). This assignment has definately opened my eyes to the crazy thought of there being over 8.7 million different species of or eukaryotic creatures on earth and that although some animals may seem very similar, there are many distinctions that make them vastly different.

Lichen is a type of fungus that grows in a symbiotic relationship with algae. Lichen is able to withstand temperatures below freezing point because it has the ability do shut down it's cells in the process of dehydration. Because the cells are shut down they are protected from the destruction of ice crystals forming inside of them.

This is a coniferous sapling. Evergreen trees can stay throughout cold winter environments by the adaptions of their leaves. Winter can be very dry so their needles are very thin, waxy and have less pores so that they can retain water much better than deciduous trees can.

Some slugs are able to survive the winter by burrowing underground below the point of freezing so that they can avoid being frozen themselves. A lot of other slugs die after laying their eggs in the autumn. The eggs are able to withstand the winter so that new slug babies can hatch and repopulate.

We found a ladybug  :)

ladybugs are able to survive the winter by establishing large groups and huddling together in elevated warm areas to hibernate due to the shortage of natural food sources.

After participating in the living things scavenger hunt, I have formulated the question, how do some of these organisms survive the winter.