Unit 9 Reflection

Unit 9 Reflection

Unit 9 was a unit on species and evolution. Species are classified by taxonomy, or large groups made of smaller groups. Larger groups include Kingdom, which covers many species, Phylum, which covers less, Class, Order, Family, then Genus which all classify a smaller group of species. Our class did a whole variety of presentations, linking them back to their taxonomical groups. Here’s mine about HIV.

One huge factor of evolution on Earth is environment. Species from the kingdom Plantae change constantly over time, and as a result have created different types of food and differing amounts and types of atmospheric gases that change what can live in these environments.

There are three domains this unit talked about. Plantae, Animalia, and Protista. Plantae include all the plants. This extends towards mosses, such as bryophytes. Mosses are nonvascular, so they don’t extend straight up, but they are the most common seedless nonvascular plants.

Animalia include invertebrates. These are animals without a backbone. They are separated into categories based upon their body plan symmetry, tissue layers, and developmental patterns. There are two different types of body plan symmetry, starting with bilateral symmetry where the body divides equally along one plane, and the radial symmetry, where the body is arranged in a circle around an axis. An example of bilateral symmetry would be a crab but a sea urchin would have radial symmetry.

There are also vertebrates, and they are classified into seven classes. Agnatha, chondrichthyes, osteichthyes, amphibia, aves, and mammalia. These are separated into “chronological” order, meaning that one appeared before the other. Agnatha is jawless fish, meaning they had little chewing or biting power, resulting in less potential for food gain than the osteichthyes, which were bony fish with jaws. These fish were able to capture more prey than the agnatha, but they came later.

Overall, this unit was a lot about improvement on current knowledge. It is common that we evolved from… something, but what was it? Where did it come from? What made it evolve? These were all questions that were answered in this unit. We seemingly evolved from a fish capable of doing a push up, according to Dr. Neil Shubin. It was able to breathe in and out of water, had a strong skeletal body, and had many digits in its wrists, allowing it to support a large amount of weight. We are able to know what came before us, and its characteristics.