Unit 7 - Ecology

Thursday April 6, 2017 C.E.:

Hurrah! We have cleared yet another unit of Biology. We are now less than fifty days from the end of school and that is including weekends and breaks. We also have spring break for another week and plenty of time to rest. The unit was probably one of the easier units and I found it quite fun. We have made it to a point where every lab gets better. The labs were probably the most exciting part of this unit, and maybe even the whole year. We have been able to do a wide variety of dissections.
We kicked the unit off with an Earthworm Dissection. We examined its internal organs and poked its gizzard. It was fascinating to complete a real dissection. We sketched the interior and exterior of the organism and labelled all the parts.

The major organs of an Earthworm

However, this lab is not all! We had plenty more exciting labs. We were able to observe the habits of live flatworms and looked at them under a microscope. We looked at their reactions to different stimuli and examined their bodies and structure.

Not only this, but we also took part in a squid dissection. This was by far my most favorite. The squid was very rubbery and elastic, and it was easy to cut it open without severing important organs. It had a lot of organs that were easy to see and it appeared quite intriguing with its arms and tentacles. We examined the heart, reproductive organs, beak and esophagus. The squid also has a vestigial structure of chitin called the pen which is on its back. However the most impressive was the ink sac. We wrote our names using the ink of the ink sac and the pen from the squid's back. What was also really interesting was its eye. After excising the cornea or the front of the eye, the lens was revealed. It was the size, shape, and color of a pearl. It was so strong and brittle that one would think it was a rock or shell. I found it very impressive.

Our final lab concerned Grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are remarkable. WE examined their four wings and elaborate leg structure. However, their mouth was the coolest. It is made up of so many parts! We looked at the interior of its head and its digestive structures. We were even able to identify its gender.

This unit was the most fun out of all of them. We studied population demographics and distribution, ecosystems, and food webs. We looked at the interactions between organisms, Nitrogen/Carbon/Phosphorus cycles, and we looked at age diagrams of populations.