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!

It's almost Christmas and what have I accomplished?

This year was bittersweet and busy.

Teaching is busy, lab is busy, driving is busy and life is just....busy. Sometimes it's hard to get myself up in the morning and go for a run because it's an earlier start to a busy day. Perhaps I'm not getting enough sleep, stress builds up, cortisol levels rise and my body tries to slow itself down the only way it can...chemically.

When the body feels over-worked the psyche can also experience burn-out. Have you ever just felt like a zombie? All your senses are ignoring theirs duties and you're experiencing what it's like to live a half-life.

Stimulants like caffeine can help jump start your blood pressure and your memory. It's been shown that a little bit of caffeine can improve short-term memory, initiate vasoconstriction and gets your heart pumping harder in the morning.

So can exercise.

The difference is that caffeine is a quick-fix and to be quite honest I don't think human bodies have evolved to keep up with the fast pace of technology and chemical enhancers. This is why I think so many people are at odds with their bodies; they simply don't know how to balance out their lives and despite that, the human body is always going to do what it's been programmed to do. It's programmed to balance out its external environment.

So when you step out into the cold, you're going to start shivering. Your muscles start moving to generate its own heat and your internal environment tries to equilibrate itself to it's external environment. Aaah homeostasis at its finest.

When you're super-stressed, your body also tries to accommodate for this change. Blood pressure rises, more adrenaline is released, heart beats faster and you have trouble sleeping. Chronic stress can lead to chronic heart problems because you're tiring your lub-dubber out.

I know I'm just reiterating everything the health books say, but sometimes I need to remind myself to just slow down. Eating won't solve anything, caffeine won't improve my mental capacity, sitting in front of the tube will not abolish my problems. Not handling my problems in an effective fashion will only hurt those around me as they experience my tempestuous moodiness.

So, put on your running shoes, enjoy the fresh air and remember that activity will do more wonders for you stress than you can imagine.

Possums and gardens

I went for a run yesterday with this German girl from the hostel. We ended up running across the "Yarra river into the Royal Botanical gardens. I always marvel at how even in such cold weather (it's not quite 60 degrees) the rainforest section is still keeping up pretty well. These plants aren't used to the cold yet they seem to be doing just fine. MAybe they do lose a couple here and there.

But Melbourne also has a water shortage. This is evident in how the artificial lakes appear to be dried up and actually look like several smaller lakes instead of one big one. Certain animals have adapted to these conditions and can sometimes live in mud (as opposed to water). One such animal is the catfish...and there have been many a gigantic catfish living in swampy lands due to their ability to outlive most other fish and their low standards in eating garbage.

But here the water level is just depressingly low. Even though it's drizzled everyday here, part of the tourist in me wants it to stop, while the water conservationist agrees that more water would be better.

Then there are possums. These are mostly nocturnal marsupials that look a great deal cuter here in Australia as opposed to the states. They come right up to visitors to beg for food (despite the signs that tell visitors to not to feed them).

Question: Remember the movie "Over the Hedge"? When an ecosystem is invaded by humans, how do some animals adapt to human presence?