The Way I See It

Biology this year has been a truly unique experience and for it I count my blessings. Count them one by one, as they come flying in through the window fluttering then falling towards my feet. My eyes are not mine anymore but something filled with new wonder and knowledge and once mundane sights do not go unnoticed now. Such as when I stand to fill a glass of water from my fridge I cannot help but look at the piece of "Irish Moss"  sitting in the pot. And it always looks so dry and I remember "swimming sperm" and I pour that poor Irish man some water.

                Other times I think of the angler fish and other terrifying deep sea creature and I wonder what I would see if I could see what I`m not seeing! If I could only take in all the complex layers of horrors that lie just beyond my range of sight. I would be terrified! I would much rather face anything from space before I find out what at the bottom of our own ocean. And I`m not sure what I is about Jellyfish but I`ve become oddly mesmerized by them this semester and now I know that if there is ever a thin, semantic line that lies between beautiful and weird, that line would be covered in Jellyfish.

                I don’t see pollen anymore, I see flying sperm. And the small craft cones now suddenly look very feminine with lips and sweet voices. I would have never thought the very things I covered in glitter at the age of 8 would be female. I look at plants with a new found wonder, they`re deadly like much of the world but beautiful like everything else as well. And everything can be questioned. Be curious and ask questions. Even if you lie in bed one day and forget all that’s true in the world. Even if the stars look like mysterious lights overhead while you pretend to sleep and even if you`ve convinced yourself that the moon is just a collective hallucination shared by millions. Ask questions. Because when all is said and done you may choose to not be certain of anything at all and if that’s the case then you just have to be passionately curious about the world around you.

                I look at the world with awe. It`s beautiful and it`s beauty radiates everywhere. And although we all know the inevitable and that somewhere over the rainbow is not a pot of gold but the cold empty void of space, we choose to see its beauty instead of the vast and indifference of space. Because we are immeasurably small in this vast cosmic wonder, but this biology class has made me curious, ask questions, and follow my heart. Because in the end, when it comes to this Earth and all its inhabitants I have to agree with a poet I know when he says that you have to care about the world, because it doesn`t care about you.

~Jessica Thandi (Biology 11 Mrs. Phillips 2013-2014 Semester 1)

Second Final Question

In biology 11 we were encouraged to find things that interested us. To search the vast and inescapable internet to find the most bizarre plants, animals, and mico organisms out there. Here is a collection of some of my favourites.

The Strangler Fig:

This species of fig tree made me look at tress a bit differently than before. Trees always brought my serenity and they seamed so peaceful, old, and slow. But this tree. This stangler fig is ruthless and mean. Completely draining the host tree of all nutriets - even sunlight!- it creates and slow and aganizing death for the host. Trees don't deserve to go out like that.
http://www.jessicatootsie.blogspot.ca/2013/12/death-by-tree.html

Cnidarians:

Jellyfish had always intruged me and now I know about their feeding/digestion, circulation, respiration, reproduction, and nervous system. This phylum also contains sea anemones and some other 10000 animals , but arent jellyfish the most fun?
http://www.jessicatootsie.blogspot.ca/2013/12/cnidarians.html

Snails and Flowers!
I also learned about rare new species of transparent snails and on a related note about how snail poop can be used to make really cool materials. Also the exsistence of skulls in flowers? nah, just a saying, since when a snap dragon dies the seed it leaves behind creepingly resembles that of a skull.

And lastly... The Tardigrades!


This beloved microscopic moss piglet speaks for itself. Being a polyextremophile, it can withstand temperatures as low as abolute zero, as high as 300 degrees farenheigh, exposed to lethal doses of radiation and still comes out alive and well. It is the only know animal known to be able to withstand the vaccum of space. For obviouse reasons, this is my favourite blog post because I learned about the coolest little critter that I would never have learned about before. I also learned about the hypothesis of panspermia. Where an organism that can withstand the vaccum of space is ejected of the Earth onto aother planet to kick start the process of evolution there.
But what do these little water bears do? With the ability to withstand such extreme conditions they must have some sort of purpose. Ah, but they don't you see. They spend all their time sucking water off of moss. Obviously the tardigrade was not born with the ability to survive these harsh conditions and they are likely the result of many generations of natural selection. One explanation is that the tardigrade had a mutation that made it more capable to withstand harsh conditions and improved it's chances to reproduce and pass the adaption to it's offspring. But the tardigrade does live in some harsh conditions such as the himilayans, hot springs, ice sheets, and ocean sediments. These places where compitition is low an animal would be able have an oppourtunity to claim a uniqe niche, but it would require years of special adaptations selected over millions of generations to be where it is now.

Aptostichus bonoi

Okay so I realized I was away for this, so I shall do it now. Now I had a really hard time just picking which celebrity animal to write about because there are ssooooo many to choose from. But being a big U2 fan I had to do them justice and I knew I would feel guilty if I passed up the opportunity to write about Bono's Joshua Tree Trapador Spider. Okay I'll admit it, I mostly picked it just for the name. It's long and ridiculous and names after the bands 1987 album titled The Joshua Tree.

 

The spider on the other hand is a nocturnal arhropod that seizes it's prey by leaping out of their burrows and injecting them with venom. The species is an endangered species and is on the conservation status.

Photo Journal

We went out one day in groups and in the freezing cold to go look at plants. The following is what we found.

Mosses:

Found infront of school

 

 



We found this moss in a shady area in the front of the school. This makes perfect sense as moss need to live in moist, shady environments to survive. This is because they have swimming sperm! In other words, to reproduce, there constantly needs to be water and water molecules present. If the mosses cannot reproduce then the demise of their species will be short and sweet. Mosses can be found on trees and rocks alike. Yes, rocks! But only if the rock is moist at all times-thats why a lot of moss forms on rocks at beaches and near river and lakes. The reason mosses grow so low to the ground is because they are non-vascular plants. Meaning they do not posses any tubes (xylem and phloem) to carry water and nutrients to the rest of their parts. Because of this, mosses have to be able to directly absord water and nutrients to distribute to all its parts.

Ferns:

Front side of fern


Back side of fern

We found ferns near the creek in a shady and moist environment. Like mosses, ferns also need a moist environment in order to survive, not only to obtain nutrients, but in order to reproduce. When ferns drop their spores, a small heart shaped prothallus is produced and it needs water for its swimming spores to fertilize. Ferns and mosses look very different but share a commen environement. Unlike mosses ferns have evolved to have vasculat tissue. It is this vascular tissue which allows them to grow tall and transport water and nutrients to all needing parts. Also because of this, ferns need an anchor for their roots. Unlike mosses which do not grow tall and instead lay low to the ground, ferns need an anchor to flourish.

Gymnosperms:

left, female cone. right, male cone

Bush of gymnosperms found infront of school.

Unlike the mosses and ferns which are restricted to living within damp environment, gymnosperms have no restrictions. They live in varied environements due to the fact that instead of having spores or swimming sperm, they have seeds. The seeds are protected and can survive harsh conditions to later become active. But there is a difference between pollination and fertilization. Pollination is when the male anther releases pollen grans that land on the female ovulate cone. This leads to fertilization because the pollen grains will start to grow pollen tubes where sperm will be released into. The result is a zygote that will later develope into a gymnosperm.

Angiosperms:

Monocots:

leaves in 3's

parrallel veins

Dicots:

petals in 3's or 4's


branched veins in leaves.

Angiosperms have adapted the best to living on land. They have a waxy coating on their leaves and stomata to help conserve water and the ability to attract pollinators. Such as bees! Bees are pollinators attacted to the taking nectar from flowers. Other flowers use the wind to disperse their seeds in and hopefull the wind will carry them far off. Another tactic used is fruits. The completely edible, colourful and delicious fruits are actually just a means to attract animals to eat them and later poop them out in a new location.

Round Worm Dissection

This is the inside of a round worm, I do not have a picture of the exterier but I remember that the round worm was a male because it had a "hooked" tail. When you cut it open you can see the spaghetti like strings, those are it's testes.



Rat Dissection

On friday we did the rat dissection. The moment in every high schoolers life where the smell of formaldehyde becomes over bearing but curiosity takes over. Or at least for me. Here is a picture of the rat, it was white/yellow in fur colour and had a tail almost 3/4 the length of its body.

Here is it's underbelly where the insision will be made.

You can almost hear the small chitter of it's teeth just by looking at them. It's long whiskers and pink nose are just too adorable!

This rat was a female, you can tell by it's lack of testes. Also look at those long toes!

And the hands, used to help the rat walk and eat.

Cutting through the rat was tough. It has muscles and skin and you can see the layers peeled back. It wasn't easily pinned back either, it put up a real fight.

The rats insides and organs are similar to that of a humans in terms of placement and relative size. It was inteteresting to look at these organs because they were larger than the frogs and more defined with the liver being the largest of them all.

The heart was well protected. Hidden under the diaphram, it was hard to cut through especially the sternum, at points you could even here the poor ladies bones breaking.

 Because of extra time and curiosity my group decided to check out the rats brain. This is the skull which was ridiculously hard to penetrate.

yes we did mush it up a bit, but we tried. Doing this brain surgery gave me a lot of respect for real brain surgens.

And now for easy viewing we pryed the organs out of the rats body to lay them out and label them. You can clearly see the size difference of all the organs now.

 

Finding - a new way of looking at - Nemo

After watching Finding Nemo at the young ripe age of 16 for the 3rd time, I was not inclined to put the effort into watching it again but I did laugh when the teacher Mr. Ray (a manta ray) carries the students away under his belly beacuse it looks a lot this image.

Anyways, yes, after Mrs.Phillips mentioned the idea of looking at Finding Nemo with a new outlook and relating it to biology 11, I feel the need to just stare at this image of a manta ray hugging these women for the rest of my life. This time though, I saw some things that I wouldn't have seen otherwise, such as the flatworm that was swimming around in the background and a seahorse with it's father (because the father gives birth - that seahorse giving birth video was wack!) I also paid more attention to the jellyfish, as we learned about them being cnidarians with no real brain, respiratory system, and circulatory system. I also came up with questions such as "Why does electricity in a jellyfish not course through it and make the top deadly too?" and "What is the ink made out of and what allows it to flow out of the squid?" I could relate this movie to the theme of  Evolution and Natural Selection, because I can see how certain sea animals must have evolved or use these tactics as natural selection. Such as nemo and his father living in a sea anemone, which grants them sancuary and food, while the clownfish cleans the sea anemone. You can also see a trait on the angler fish that helps it to catch prey and for females, to attract a possible mate. The luminescent organ is called an esca. You can also see how sharks are specificaly designed as predators with their rows of teeth and large lumbering bodies and sturdy jaws and then the irony of them being changed to believe "fish are friends, not food"



First Final Question.

Roundworm:

Evolution/natural selection:
Roundworms, or Nematodes most likely evolved from the earlier flatworms about 548 million years ago, and like everything else at this time, they lived in the water. Early roundworms had a bi-directional digestive track, meaning that they ingested and excreted the left over food from the mouth. Now roundworms have a unidirectional digestive track where food is taken in from the mouth, digested and absorbed in a long tube and then excreted out the anus.

Characteristics:
feeding/digestion: land dwelling roundworms will eat fungi out of plants, but human dwelling roundworms will feed off of human fluids meanind blood and mucus. Roundworms have a definitive digestive track that runs the length of their body. They do not have a stomach but they have a mouth, phyarinx, intestine, and anus. Because of the lack of a stomach, food id taken directly into the intestines where enzymes are produced.

Reproduction:
All roundworms reproduce sexually. There is a male and a female. The female carries eggs in a oviduct, and the male produces sperm in the testes.

Respiration:
A roundworm has no formal respiratory system. Instead they obtain oxygen and emmit carbon dioxide through diffusion.

Circulation:
A roundworm has no formal blood vessels or heart.

Nervous System:
It has two nerve cords that transmit impulses in the roundworm.

Earthworm

Evolution/Natural Selection:
Worms like all living things began as simple organisms living in aqueous regions.

Feeding/Digestion:
The earthworm has no jaw or teeth so much instead rely on its pharynx . Food enters a long tube where it is stored in the crop, then later the muscular gizzard will ground the food up and it is digested in the instestine. They eat roots of plants, and decaying animals, and most famously, they eat dirt, but only for it's organic matter.

Reproduction:
To reproduce earthworms must mate. They are also hermaphrodites meaning each worm possess male and female reproduction organs. Each worm produces so much mucous that a slime tube forms around their bodies. Each worm then releases sperm into the slime tube and it is then deposited into the other worms sperm recepticales.

Respiration:
Earth worms do not have lungs. Instead they breath through their skin. Oxygen and Carbon dioxide exchange through diffusion.

Circulation:
The earthworm has a closed circulatory system, meaning all the blood is confined to blood vessels and is not floating freeing inside the body.

Nervous System:
The Eathworm has a ventral nerve cord which runs the length of its body and connects to it's brain or cerebral ganglion. Every segment of the earthworms body is connected by segmental ganglion that brach off from the nerve cord.

The Grasshopper.

Evolution/Natural Selection:
Arthropods are the most successful of all living animals in terms of their number of individuals and species, total mass, and complete occupation of terrestrial habitats. Insects seem to be clearly derived from arthropods. Grasshoppers have evolved over time to develope strong enhanced hind legs for jumping and avoiding predators.

Feeding/Digestion
Most grasshoppers are herbivores as they like to eat grass, leaves, and crops, but many grasshoppers are omnivores. Interestingly, many grasshoppers will eat from different plant hosts while some will only eat from one type of plant. Unlike the worm, the grasshopper has a mandible which is able to chew food very slightly, but is the start to mechanical digestion. It has a crop which holds the food and a gizzard to break it down, and a stomach that produces enzymes to break it down and the waste exists through the anus.

Reproduction:
Grasshoppers reproduce sexually. The male introduces sperm to the female through a package into the females ovipositor. They female then inserts the eggs into the ground once they have fertilized.

Respiration:
They breathe through openings on the surface of the abdomen called spiracles where they open to allow for oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange. Help is taken by the use of a tracheae.

Circulation:
Grasshoppers have a open circulatory system where their bodily fluid flow freely filling body cavities and appendages. Its one closed organ is the dorsal vessel which extends the lengh of its body. It is a large tube with two regions: one containing the heart and the other the aorta.

Nervous System:
Has a nerve system controlled by a ganglia, found in all segments of the body and in the head. They have small hairs called sensilla that respond to a certain stimulus.

Starfish

Evolution/Natural Selection:
More than 630 million years ago a revolution within the animal kingdom appeared-the deutrerostomes. Two phylum conprised this group: the echinoderms and the chordates. Over time the starfish has evolved to have the ability reproduce even if it is fragmented.

Feeding/Digestion:
Most starfish are predators and eat sponges, snails, bivalves, and microalgae, but some can be detrivores and feast of decomposing organic material and faecal matter. Starfish use their cardiac stomach which can be everted from its body to engulf and digest its food.

Reproduction:
There is a male and a female starfish and they can reproduce sexually or asexually. Although reproducing asexually will only result in two whole starfish with the same DNA.

Respiration:
The starfish breathes through gas exchange in two areas, one, on the skin at then ends of its tube feet, and the second at the top of their bodies through papulae.

Circulation:
It has three rings of blood vessels. One around the mouth, another around the digestive system and one around the aboral surface. It has radial canals that run through all the arms and join in the middle that functions as a circulatory system.

Nervous System:
Starfish are sensitive to light, touch, temperature, and orientatiom despite having any well defined sensory organs. They are sensitive at their tube feet and have eye spots on the ends of their arms. A starfish had radial nerves running the length of each ray and it has s nerve ring that connects all radial nerves.

Grass Frog

Evolution/Natural Selection
Evidence suggests that frogs date back to 265 million years ago. It is one of the most diverse vertebrate species inhabiting tropic regions to subarctic regions. Most notably frogs have been seen as having adapted to living on land as well as in the water making them amphibians. To adapt to living on land they have developed teeth in order to make predation easier on land.

Feeding/Digestion:
Unlike other animals before it, frogs have an oesophagus that food will travel down to get to the stomach. Digestive enzymes will churn up the food where it will then proceed to the small intestines where the majority of the digestion occurs. To catch prey frogs use their cleft tongues which can be shot out and retracted at great speeds. They eat greens and algae as tadpoles, but when they mature into adults they begin to feed on flies and other insects.

Reproduction:
There are female and male frogs and they reproduce through extermal fertilization. The female lays her eggs in the water and the male swims over to fertilize the egg. These eggs then hatch into tadpoles and will later metamorphasis into adult frogs.

Respiration:
A frog can breathe through its lungs and skin. When submerged in water it can directlty diffuse oxygen into its blood because of the blood vessels located near the surface of its skin.

Circulation:
The frog has a three chambered heart where oxyginated blood and deoxyginated blood enter the heart through seperate atria. When the chambers contract the two seperate blood streams pass into a commen ventricle before the oxygentaed blood is passed into the aorta and the pulmonary artery for deoxyginated blood. The reasons frogs have a higher metabolic rate is because the chance of the two types of blood mixing is very low because the ventricle is partially divided into narrow cavities.

Nervous System:
Unlike the past animals, frogs have a highly developed nervous system with a brain, spinal cord and nerves.A frogs brain can be very similar to that of a humans, it consits of two olfactory lobes, two cerebral hemispheres, a pineal body, two optic lobes, a cerebellum and a medula oblongata. One difference is that the cerebum in frogs is much smaller than in humans.

Growing Complexity:
Now that we can see the similarities and differences between these animals it may be easier to look at them in terms of their complexity. On the simpler side we have round worms. A simple tube digestive track with no real brain, no major organs, and no circulatory system, this animals gets where it needs to be, which would be in your intestines. Slowly we can see small changes as we move up the ladder of species. The earthworm is like the roundworm but add a crop, and gizzard to help it digest food. Then there is the grasshopper, who's insides will looks largely like the earthworm but the organs such as the gizzard, crop and intestines are much more difined, easy to see and larger. There is also the starfish. Unlike the previous animals they have blood vessels and are advanced in the sense thay they can regrow a lost limb and reproduce asexually. Then finally, the large jump between all the animals to the grass frog. The grass hopper unlike the other animals has a brain! It has major organs such as lungs, a heart, a liver, a stomach, and intestines. The frog is independant, and successful in it's environment. You can clearly see the increase in complexity when knowing about these animals. From no brain, to a full brain and from one large organ to humanoid organs, the efects of evolution are clear.

Frog Dissection

This is the frog that my partner and I dissected, its skin was very tough and it was slimy, but that was probably because of the fact that it just came out of water. 

Here is the underside of the frog where the incision will be made.

After prying the poor frogs mouth and probably breaking his jaw we could see his tongue which does not seem to be so large. 

Here are its really cool looking webbed feet that were surprisingly small.

All the hands. They looked very humanoid. All except the presence of a thumb.

This frog dissection was amazing, I was so amazing by the tiny humanoids organs. Everything was a small version of what you would find in a human and I thought that was really amazing, and before this dissection I would never have thought that a frogs insides would be so advanced.

Star Fish Dissection

My starfish specimen was very stiff and spiny to the touch. It had 5 radial arms, and the whole starfish was larger than I thought and had a peachy. brown colour.

  On the bottom of the starfish there are the tube feet that are used for locomotion. I was lucky to have a specimen that had an everted stomach, which spurts out gastric juices to digest its food before it engulfs it.

The starfish seemed to be only filled with brown goo, I was surprised by this as I thought it would a bit more complex. After this dissection I am curious as to how the starfish digests its prey and I would not mind seeing a video of it.

Grasshopper Dissection

Our grasshoppper was a male as it did not have a ovipositer at the end of its abdomen.

My partner and I counted that it had 9 segments in its abdomen.

Here we can see the grasshopper's compound eyes that are used to pick up on motion and basic form and is able to discern the distance between objects.

Here are the labelled parts of the grasshoppers hind jumping legs. It has 6 legs in total, two of which are these longer and stronger hind legs.

These are the spiracles, a series of holes located on either side of the abdomen, they are used for breathing.

My grasshopper specimen, was normal in size and it's skin was very tough and hard to the touch, I was surprised in how fragile the wings were and how the wing underneath was retracting like an accordion.

When I saw the grasshopper cut open, I was surprised by the large amount of brown goo, you can see a one track digestive system, so there is only one tube and no major organs.

After doing this dissection I am curious as to how a grasshopper can fly because to me the wings seemed very small and not at all large enough to support the weight of this grasshopper.

The Golden Tortoise Beetle

This golden beetle (Charidotella sexpunctata) is a member of the leaf beetle family and is native to the Americas. It varies in length from 5 to 7 millimeters long and comes in orange and gold and is almost always metallic. This little bug can change its colour when threatened by changing the flow of fluid between the layers of cuticle. It changes from a shiny gold to a dull brown when disturbed.

When this beetle lays eggs its larvae do something odd to protect themselves. It sheds its skin onto a structure called the anal fork which positions over its body as a fecal shield to hide from predators.