Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Katelin Kuyoth's Scavenger Hunt #1

This is a Argiope spider, also known as a zipper spider I found near a pond. These spiders along with all other consumers are known as a heterotroph meaning they cannot make there own food, like producers can. The producers are classified as autotrophs. Scientist believe that the Argiope lures it's pray because of the webs material. It is thought that the web has an ultraviolet light, much similar to a flower, that attracts other insects.

 This picture of a hornets nest is a representation of a population. A population is a group of a specific species in a certain area. This population of hornets made themselves at home in the community of my backyard. In my backyard I have all of my rabbits and chickens and various insects forming the community. 
This is my rabbit Harmony who is an English Angora. She is a crossed between a Blue Eyed White (BEW) and a Black English Angora resulting in the white spot on her nose. In rabbits both colors, BEW and a Black, are dominate traits. This is known as codominace. While she mostly acquired her mothers color of black you can still see the BEW from her father by not only the white nose but she also has blue in her eyes (which you can't tell from the photo).
Here is a picture of a great horned owl and a tertiary consumer. Tertiary consumers are near the top of the food chain and have very few predators. In addition these consumers receive less energy than the producers do. This is because energy is lost as it travels from organism to organism. It all starts with the producers with the maximum energy level. The primary consumers then eat the producers only getting a portion of that energy, and the same thing happens when the secondary consumers eat the primary consumers and so on.
Seagulls are scavengers picking up anything they can  find. Not only do they fish on there own but when there is a fishing boat near by, throwing away scraps, a seagull is sure to be there to pick them up.They also scavenge for any trash that we humans would leave on a beach. They truly are "garbage men" (spwickstorm.com)   

This is a pray-a-mantis that I found crawling inside my house. Being greenish in color pray-a-mantises can camouflage with the greenery making it difficult to spot them. This supports Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest and natural selection. If this pray-a-mantis lived where there isn't any greenery its survival rate would decrease where as the brown pray-a-mantis population would increase.
This is a water bug I found in a pond. The way the bug is able to stay on top of the water is due to water being cohesive  and having a high  surface tension.The reason why water has these properties is due to the hydrogen bonds witch allows the water not only to stick together (cohesion) but these bonds also help regulate the temperature absorbing and releasing heat as needed.
Pictured here is a butterfly pollinating a  flower. They have a mutualistic relationship meaning that both organisms benefit. The butterfly solves its hunger by drinking the nectar while the butterfly pollinates the flower so it can reproduce.


1 comment:

Ms. Steele said...

HI Katelin
Great picture of the spider - that is very interesting about the lure of UV light. I was familiar with that for flowers but not with web building spiders - cool.

Having spent time on the coast this summer confirms your claim that sea gulls are garbage collectors :)
Ms. Steele