Progress Reflection

     So far in biology eleven, I am proud of the amount of knowledge that I have gained in this course! I've learned a lot about organisms that I had never understood before for example the details of natural selection and how it leads to evolution and what exactly a virus is. NOW I FEEL INFORMED :D this if fabulous. In my opinion, my best work was evident in the tests, the biology home video, and my blog entries. I feel like tests and are the best way for me to give evidence of the knowledge that I have retained in a unit. I generally spent as much time as I could to complete both tests and took pride in the amount of information that I was able to display on the spot. The biology video was one of the best ways for me to show what I had learned. It was definitely my favorite assignment so far as it was very fun to prepare and film. And after watching it, I was surprised that I actually knew so much information. Still working on uploading it onto the interweb though...teehee. In addition to those pieces of work, I feel like the paragraphs that I have written in my blog are some of my best work because in each post, I had learned something new so I tried to elaborate and provide a lot of accurate information to share the new facts that I had learned. In particular, the narwhal post. That one was cool. I like that one.
     My binder is pretty organized.I am able to flip through it and use it as a study tool. Some things are slightly out of order though.After looking through my binder, it is evident that I have completed pretty much all of the question and answer worksheets that were handed out.HOWEVER....this is going to come across as extremely pathetic...but cut-and-paste assignments stress me out. So...ya. The majority of those are incomplete or gone because either some cutout pieces were lost or I just became very confused. And then I rage quit. I have also kept up with most of the work that has been assigned, except for the scientific names of imaginary species and a few blog entries. It is evident that I could try harder to stay on top of everything in order to prove that I am engaged in this class.
      So far, the narwhal blog post means the most to me because the information that I found out was super interesting. Who would have thought that something that looks like a decorative horn is actually a tooth that may work as a hyper sensitive sensory organ. It was surprising to me because everyone knows what a narwhal is but they don't know what the tusk is for. Now I know. I FEEL INFORMED AGAIN.
     To me, engagement in class means listening attentively  to the teacher as she is talking and actually trying to relate to and comprehend what is being said , using time in class to complete assignments, contributing to class discussions, and working together with peers to actually engage in making discoveries in labs. In class, I have learneda lot  of fascinating things from paying attention and actually using my brain while taking notes rather than just blanking out and copying like a robot. In team projects, I like to share ideas and learn from the ideas contributed from others.I totally love labs and try to find interesting results to the best of my ability.
   For the rest of the semester I will make it my goal to be more engaged in class and spend more time on homework. I want my blog to have more posts and just give as much evidence of progress in this class as possible. Because I am definitely learning and am starting to view things differently but I don't think that it is as evident as it should be.

What is the Purpose of the Tusk

There are many different hypothesis' as to why narwhals have a large tusk protruding from their skull. Because  the tusk is a trait that only males have, many theories state that the tusk is a sexual trait that displays male dominance and can attract females through social ranking. Some sources claim that the tusk may be used as a weapon although the most fascinating discovery that has been made regarding the tusk is that it actually contains ten million nerve connections and it may be highly sensitive to many things including hydrodynamics, temperature, pressure, and possibly many other stimuli.

The Majestic Narwhal

 Q: What is the purpose of the long horn extending from from the head of a narwal?
A: My hypothesis is that the long horns may not be as "Functional" as they are "Intimidating". I feel like narwhals probably aren't very aggressive  creatures so the horn may be a way of scaring away predators.

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.