Mushrooms!!!!

This week I learned a lot about fungi and how important they are to the world. The kingdom fungus is made up of primitive fungi, sac fungi, bread molds, and club fungi. Fungi are earths decomposers and help the earth enormously. There are over70,000 types that have been named and possibly 1.5 million that haven't! All fungi are made up of mycelium which is a thread like structure that grows underground. The mycelium may produce a fruiting body that is and above ground structure (like a mushroom) that is used to release spores to reproduce.

                  If you ever want to go on a mushroom foray, you might want to keep some things in mind. First of all you need to know that mushrooms are usually found below trees or on dead matter and they usually show up after a nice long rain. When you pick a mushroom don’t worry about killing it because what you are picking is just the fruit and the majority of the mushroom is below ground in the mycelium. Also, make sure to dig up the entire mushroom and observe where you found it so you can identify it. When identifying it you want to use a mushroom key and field guide. When using these tools pay attention and make sure all of the characteristics match up, also be aware that the picture in the book may not be the same color as the mushroom you found.

                  When we went out on our foray we found lots of mushrooms. One of the mushrooms we found was brownish red with a tan underside. It seemed to be a shelf fungi and it was attached to a tree with others like it scattered around. We put it in a paper bag and when we got back to the lab, we saw that the spore print was light brown. Spore prints show the color of the spores of the mushroom releases in nature and are important in identifying mushrooms. We then tried to identifying it with a mushroom key but didn’t find out what it was that it was a polypore. From there we looked in a field guide under polypores but couldn’t find it we looked again after realizing that it might not be the same color in the picture and found that it was an “Artist’s Conk.”  From this we learned that when identifying any organism, it is important to take your time and make sure to use as many characteristics as possible!

Are Birds Really Dinosaurs?

                This article went very in depth on both sides of the argument. I am agreeing with the fact of dinosaurs evolving into birds for this essay. This is because I feel like better, more believable points were made on the affirmative side of the argument. These points were centered on how both birds like dinosaurs lay eggs, the many homologous structure that they have in common, and closely related fossils that have been found.

                In this article, similarities in bone structure between the first birds and dinosaurs were greatly emphasized. Structures such as thin-walled bones, S-shaped neck, and many others are mentioned. A fossil was found in 1860 that was “The London Specimen of Archaeopteryx lithographica” this was an example of “Transitional form” (transition between birds and reptiles). This shows that there could be a link between birds and a certain type of dinosaurs. Birds also have many obvious similarities, such as the fact that they lay eggs, have scales on their feet, and though it is not visible it has been proven that their anatomy is very similar to dinosaurs.

                This transformation could have easily have happened through natural selection. When the dinosaurs were existent it is proven that some did have wing like structures.  If when the dinosaurs were wiped out, some could have had a favorable trait that let them survive (possibly wings) and passed this on to their offspring then it is possible that they could have survived. They could also have possibly adapted through natural as the history of the earth progressed into the bird today. This is also supported by the “transitional structure” fossil that was found.

                Overall I feel as though the fact of birds evolving from dinosaurs is not a farfetched as it seems. Through natural selection and many other processes of adaptation, it seems that organisms find ways to survive. This is why I feel that it is possible for dinosaurs to evolve into something altogether different to survive.

Conclusion to Is it Alive Lab!

Conclusion

In our investigation we used test tubes to simulate different environments, bromothymal blue to test for CO2, and a microscope & stain to look for cells. We didn’t encounter any problems but if we could change the way we collected data, we would separate the different types of environments. For example, have freshwater and saltwater with the two days we collected data on one table and have the soil and sand with the two days on another.

            The independent variable in our experiment was the different environments that and the dependent was the reaction the unknown had to that environment. The controls we had included how much water was in the water environments, how much we watered the sand and soil, and that all of our test environments were in the same environment. By putting the unknown in different environments (stimuluses’) we were trying to see if it would elicit different responses to any of the environments.

            I would consider our conclusions to be a fact. This is because we did prove life and it cannot be disproven, which is why it is not a theory because a theory can be. From this lab I learned how to use stain and the bromothymal blue, as well as how to set up future labs in this class.