Homeostasis and the lipid bilayer

What are the different parts of the lipid bilayer? Why is this comic funny?

Labs

Now as all of you know, labs are an important aspect of AP biology. We're starting off with two labs, the first of which is the Crayfish dissection and other, which you have had some exposure to, is the pillbug lab.

Knowing the labs is your greatest asset to doing well on the free-response questions and this website is pretty awesome.

http://www.ucopenaccess.org/courses/APBioLabs/course/index.html

Write up a synopsis of lab #12. Identify the dependent and independent variables, constants and write a hypothesis.

This is due the first day of class, but you may post it to me (I have all my posts hidden now) on this blog.

Fun-guy

Seeing that all current responses on my blog are in Japanese. I'll assume that most of my AP students are over-enjoying their summer. This blog has to do with my mild obsession with fungi.

I remember in high school, a friend of mine considered advocating vegetarianism and judiciously split vegetarianism into 3 categories: vegetarians who ate vegetables as well as egg and milk products, vegans who ate only vegetable products, but no milk or egg products and finally, the fruitarians people who did not consume entire vegetables, but only ate leaves and fruit. I feel that fruitarianism would ultimately be deleterious to the human body seeing that even diligent vegetarians have issues obtaining the vitamin and nutrients needed to maintain a healthy body. There are ways that the body responds to lack of nutrition in order to maintain homeostasis, and this can involve: hair loss, flaky skin, stunted growth, and sterility.

But I digress, I was talking about fungus.

WELL fungus is not animal nor vegetable. Fungus, on the tree of life has it's own branch completely separate from plants. Now I know as you're fastidiously reading this blog you're wondering "WHERE is Ms. Feucht going with this?"

Fungus is a higher form of organism than a plant. It is heterotrophic and would die if it didn't have something else to consume. This means it can be any level of consumer on the food chain. Therefore, if a person is going to give up meat, it is only logical that the next step is to give up the various forms of fungi found in foods like mushrooms and yeast products (like bread and beer). Fungus is actually more closely related to animals than to plants. In addition to being a heterotroph, it also contains chitin.

Do you know what else has chitin? I should make this a bonus question and offer a thousand extra credit points for it. But in the age of instant information I'm going to offer 5 points. And a prize if you can tell me the relationship between fungus and other organisms that have chitin.

Anyways, I have also been obsessing over "Scrubbing Bubbles" bathroom cleaner. I've been surveying my shower for the past couple days and have divided it into regions of two separate mold environments. (Yes, your biology teacher does this in her spare time). On the end opposing the spray of water there is a black mold. A pinkish mold has spread over the region beneath the faucet. The compete for different areas I believe because they have adaptations that allow them to flourish in different areas.

For this assignment I want you to create a hypothesis as to explaining why this trend is so.

Take care and I look forward to seeing you in a couple weeks.

The Channel islands and biogeography

The California Channel Islands have been considered the "Galapagos Islands" of North America. For those of you unfamiliar with the Galapagos Islands, here's the blurb from Wikipedia:

The voyage of the Beagle brought the survey ship HMS Beagle under captain Robert FitzRoy to the Galápagos on September 15, 1835 to survey approaches to harbours. The captain and others on board including his companion the young naturalist Charles Darwin made a scientific study of geology and biology on Chatham, Charles, Albemarle and James islands before they left on October 20 to continue on their round-the-world expedition. Darwin noticed that mockingbirds differed between islands, though he thought the birds now known as Darwin's finches were unrelated to each other and did not bother labelling them by island.[2] The Englishman Nicolas Lawson, acting Governor of Galápagos for the Republic of the Equator, met them on Charles Island and as they walked to the prison colony told him that tortoises differed from island to island. Towards the end of the voyage Darwin speculated that the distribution of the mockingbirds and the tortoises might "undermine the stability of Species".[3] When specimens of birds were analysed on his return to England it was found that many apparently different kinds of birds were species of finches which were also unique to islands. These facts were crucial in Darwin's development of his theory of natural selection explaining evolution, which was presented in The Origin of Species.[2]

Like Darwin's finches, the Channel Islands demonstrate Darwin's theory of natural selection in the form of the different animals that reside on the various islands.

Case in point: the island fox.

These foxes are everywhere on the island of Santa Cruz, yet not as prevalent on the other islands. The are about the size of cats and if you saw one at night, you'd likely mistake it for a cat.

They move in packs.

But let's say that all of the islands had foxes. Perhaps on one of the islands the fox had a larger snout in order to better hunt for a type of ant and on another island the fox was more agile in order to climb trees. This would exhibit a type of natural selection known as adaptive radiation. Adaptive radiation is specific to islands (like Darwin's finches). It is important to note that the very idea of natural selection has nothing to do with the environment "making" animals to look a certain way. Instead, the only animals to survive and reproduce would be those that are more "fit" to handle the environmental pressures of a specific island.

An example to illustrate this would be the giraffe. I giraffe does not "stretch" out its neck in order eat leaves at the top of a tree. This is NOT an example of adaptation.

Instead, over time, the giraffes that were the most fit for an environment were those with longer necks. These giraffes with longer necks amassed mutation after mutation until they look much like they do today.

Island foxes probably had relatives on the mainland, but landed themselves on a strip of land whose environmental design favored indviduals that were smaller and a sandy shade of gray.

AP Biology Camping Trip!

The crew lounging at Century Lake. Janea Making eggs for the first time!