Project Blog

This week we finished our biodiversity project. I have chosen the invasive species. We had to choose an invasive organism who is not native to where they live and explain why they are such a problem. We created an infographic about them. My invasive species is the cane toad. I learned that these toads are very large, about the size of a teacup and weigh about 2.5 lbs. They will eat anything that fits in their mouths, and pose a serious threat of endangerment or extinction to larger predators.


In class we needed to present our projects, and I learned a lot from them. One group did the beluga whale, which was being threatened by trash and oil spills in the ocean. They decided that they best way to save the belugas was to throw all of your trash away in the trash can, and to make sure that none of your pipes are leaky so that no spilled oil ends up in the ocean. One group did the markhor, which is a very interesting looking animal with curly horns. It faces extinction because people hunt it for trophies and for its horns. They decided that making it illegal to own a markhor horn or to hunt markhor would be a good way to save them. Another group taught us about the bumblebee bat, which got its name because it was so tiny. People are chopping down the forests where they live and human pollution is making them endangered. Listening to these presentations really help you to understand what other kids are learning and gives people a chance to present their findings.


Backward-Looking


What resources did you use while working on this piece? Which ones were especially helpful? Which ones would you use again?

I used a website called easel.ly to make my infographic, and I would definitely use that again. I also found a word art website that was fun and useful to make a frog shaped piece of art. I would so totally use those again.


Inward-Looking


How do you feel about this piece of work? What parts of it do you particularly like? Dislike? Why? What did/do you enjoy about this piece or work?

I am very proud about the infographic that my partnership made. I really liked the researching stage where we got to learn all about our organism. I also like the beginning part where we started to make the infographic. I didn’t like that my partner didn’t help me a lot. He just gave me his information and played typing games while I made the entire infographic. I did like how neat our product turned out, even though my partner didn’t help. I really enjoyed this project.


Outward-Looking


Did you do your work the way other people did theirs? In what ways did you do it differently? In what ways was your work or process similar?

I was one of the very few kids in the class that chose invasive species. There were five other people who had chosen it. One group made a diorama, so my infographic was pretty different from theirs. The other group made an infographic as well, but theirs was different from ours. The rest of the class made websites and timelines instead, so I was pretty different from everyone else.



Forward-Looking


What would you change if you had a chance to do this piece over again?

I would get my partner to help me. He spent the whole time talking to other groups and playing games online instead of helping me. We could’ve made a better infographic if he had helped, so next time I would get him to participate instead of playing useless games.

Biodiversity

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This week we were introduced to our biodiversity project. We either chose the endangered species part, or the invasive part. I chose the invasive species part. Invasive species is just what it sounds like-a species that is not native to the land they are living in. My group chose the cane toad as our invasive species.

The cane toad’s scientific name is Rhinella marina. The Cane Toad has to stay moist. It was native to South and Central America, but they were transported to the Caribbean and other islands. They live in areas like woodlands, low woodlands, low shrubbery, low open forest and open forests. They will also live in wet, damp areas. The cane toad is a large amphibian, about the size of a medium teacup. It’s average weight is about 2.5 pounds. It is incredibly toxic, and has collapsed many ecosystems because of its toxins.

The cane toads will eat anything small enough to fit in it’s mouth. Mostly small rodents, small birds, bats, and reptiles. There are not many organisms that can eat it without dying, but some eels can. Meat ants are also not affected by their toxins, and some birds can flip it over and attack from the underside. But there are not a lot of natural predators to the cane toads.

Cane toads were first native to South and Central America, but in 1935, the Australians had a problem with cane beetles, which were destroying the harvest a manufacturing of cane sugar. The cane toads were introduced to the Caribbean and other islands. They were also introduced to Australia to fix the cane beetle problem. But that didn’t work out very well, because though they didn’t eat a single beetle, they created a new problem. Cane toads collapse ecosystems. BIG time. They actually kill the bigger predators, like crocodiles and some large fish. They have driven some predators to extinction because of their poison, and they actually don’t harm the smaller organisms very much. Some of the bigger organisms are becoming endangered or extinct, so the smaller prey is taking this as a chance to overpopulate the ecosystem. So there is some species extinct, and some WAY overpopulated.

Cane toads are hard to kill off. They have been depleting slightly, because there are some of the toads infected with a lungworm parasite. Lungworm parasites can make the adult toads move slower, so that they are easier to catch. And about 30% of the baby toads are killed by this parasite. There is another way that the toads have been depleting. The tadpole babies are able to shoot an ‘alarm pheromone’ into the water to tell the other tadpoles to be aware of any danger. But this is not such a hot idea, since about half of the tadpoles die of fright before they reach adulthood, and the survivors are half the size they should be. The toads are already technically doing something about themselves, and the Australian government is already thinking about what to do about the toads.

S&EP: SP8: Communicating Information

For the project, we have to build some sort of poster or online way of communicating the information that we gathered about our species. My group chose to do an online infographic, a poster with timelines, images, and text to communicate information. I learned how to use an infographic maker called easel.ly to create our infographic. It contains all of the information about cane toads. This helped to teach me how to create an infographic, and how to communicate the known information in a fun and easy way.

XCC: Cause and Effect

The cane toads are a great example of a cause and effect relationship. The cane beetles were the reason they were brought to Australia. That is the cause. And the collapsing of the ecosystems, the species being driven to extinction, and others overpopulating. That’s the effect. I think that the people that brought the toads to Australia should’ve checked to make sure that they would actually catch and eat the beetles. Then they could be all like, ‘Oh, they won’t solve the problem. Guess we should do something else about the cane beetles.’ That is what they should’ve done.

Energy

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This week we were studying energy in ecosystems and how the energy is passed around in a certain ecosystem. We were also discussing relationships between organisms in an ecosystem. Let’s begin with the relationships.





There are three main kinds of relationships: predation, competition, and symbiotic. There are three kinds of symbiotic relationships, mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism.





Predation


Predation is a predator-prey relationship. It always is a win-lose kind of thing, so one organism get a meal, and the other is the meal. Like if a rabbit were eating grass, the grass is the prey and the rabbit would be the predator in that certain relationship. If you had pizza for lunch, you were the predator and the pizza was the prey. That’s how it works.





Next We have Competition


Competition relationships are just like they sound: two organisms are competing for something, food, water, mates, shelter, it seems like they can find anything to fight about. Deer fight, so do gorillas, and even some birds compete for mates. It’s kind of like you battling your sibling for the last cupcake.





Next would be symbiosis, mutualism, parasitism, and commensalism


A mutual relationship is a win-win situation. Both organisms benefit. Like the Egyptian Plover is a kind of bird that needs food. It eats leeches. (Gross). The Nile crocodile, however, has leeches in its mouth, and needs to get them out. So the Egyptian Plover has a meal of “yummy” leeches, and the Nile crocodile gets rid of the pests. Their relationship is mutual. Like when you win the rock-paper-scissors game and you decide to give half of the cupcake to your sister. You both win.





Commensalism is when one organism benefits from the experience, and the other couldn’t care less. They really don’t care. Like the acacia tree and the orchid, the orchid benefits from the protection of the tree, whereas the tree doesn’t really get anything out of it. If you moved the orchid away, it would suffer, but the tree couldn’t care less. Like when your sister turns off your bedroom light when you’re trying to read. You care, since you can’t read, but your dog, who can see better than you in the dark, couldn’t care less.





Parasitism is where one benefits, and the other is harmed. Like a dog and a tick, the tick gets the dog’s blood as a meal, but the dog is uncomfortable and in pain for a while. Like when your sister wants you to piggyback her, she gets the benefit of a ride, but your hips are falling off.





Energy in environments
We know that plants are the producers in the ecosystems and they get their energy from the sun. Producers are called autotrophs. Next we have the primary consumers, the secondary consumers, and the tertiary consumers, all of which are considered heterotrophs. The energy pyramid shows us the trophic levels of the food chains.





The decomposers are set separately from the others because they get their energy from all of the levels. Plants get energy from the sun, herbivores get it from the plants, omnivores get it from herbivores, and carnivores get it from omnivores. Decomposers get it from everyone. Everything in an environment happens for a reason. If you removed the sun, nothing would grow, feeding no one. If the plants were removed, herbivores would die. So would omnivores, and carnivores… If you removed anything from the ecosystem, the rest would collapse.

S&EP: SP2 Using models


This week we used model to explain energy usage. We had four cups, two with one hole, one with two holes, and one with three holes. We were in a line, and a one holed cup scooped up a cupful of water to the brim. They passed it into their right hand and poured it into the next cup This went on until the last person poured the water into the graduated cylinder to measure how much water was left. Then we found out the energy efficiency.





XCC: Patterns





When we used the cup and water method to figure out our energy efficiency, we used a pattern: scoop, transfer, pour, transfer, pour, etc. The pattern was working excellently.