Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Field trip to Pisgah National Forest




Our Field trip was great fun and, thankfully, no one was injured on the Hike!!

Monday, May 3, 2010

Window pane terms

*** Additional things you need to know! CREATE WINDOW PANES OF THE FOLLOWING TERMS
1.Geographical Isolation- When organisms evolve into new species as a result of being isolated from other populations
2.Behavioral Isolation- Organisms that are similar to each other don’t mate because they don’t act the right way, this eventually leads to a new species.
3.Temporal/Reproductive isolation-When organisms that may be similar physically can’t mate because they don’t have compatible reproductive organs or perhaps they have different mating seasons.
4.Divergent evolution-When one species evolves into many different species to adapt to a new environment
5.Convergent evolution-When organisms with different ancestors evolve to have similar traits ( a bird has wings, a fly has wings but they have different ancestors)
6.Adaptive radiation- ( similar to convergent evolution so choose either one to do a window pane of, no need to do both) one species evolves rapidly into several different species to take advantage of different environmental resources. (Darwin’s Finches)
7.Gradualism- Evolution that occurs slowly over a long period of time.
8.Punctuated Equilibrium-Evolution that occurs rapidly due to some sort of natural disaster or other environmental reason
9.Vestigial structures- structures found in an organism that no longer serve a purpose. ( our appendix, our tail bone)
10.Homologous structures- characteristics which are shared by related species because they have been inherited in some way from a common ancestor. For example, the bones on the front fins of a whale are homologous to the bones in a human arm and both are homologous to the bones in a chimpanzee arm.
11.Analogous structures- characteristics are analogous (also called "convergent"), which means that they serve the same function in different species but they evolved independently rather than from the same embryological material or from the same structures in a common ancestor. An example of an analogous structure would be the wings on butterflies, bats, and birds.