Thursday, February 16, 2012

The last 2 days in class, we have started a new unit about the diversity of life. We covered the first two sections of notes on classification and fungi.

Classification of Life: looking at evolutionary history by studying past and present diversity

  • taxonomy: identifying, naming and classifying species
  • Carolus Linnaeus, 1707 to 1778: Swedish physician and botanist (plant biologist), created binomial nomenclature
  • Binomial nomenclature: two-part scientific name for an organism, includes the genus and species, in Latin
  • Homo (genus) sapiens (species)

  • classification system has a heirarchy: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species
  • Cladistic Revolution: organisms used to be grouped by appearance but now they are grouped by common ancestors and genetics
  • Cladistic Analysis: looking for clades, or branches, of an ancestor and all its descendents
  • this new way of organizing species is based on a strict code of cladistic analysis

  • Life is classified into three domains: bacteria, archaea and eukarya
  • Bacteria and Archaea: prokaryotic
  • Eukarya: eukaryotic, include 4 kingdoms: animalia, fungi, protista, plantae

  • Dichotomous Key: pairs of opposing statements in a list, helps classify an organism

The Fungi Kingdom

  • decomposers: rot and break down dead animals and plants, feces and organic material
  • chemical recyclers
  • eukaryotic, usually multicellular, more closely related to animals than plants
  • heterotrophic, absorb nutrients
  • release hydrolytic enzymes to break down food
  • some are parasitic or pathogenic

  • hyphae: thread-like tubes that cover membranes and cytoplasm, make up the body
  • mycelium: networks of tubular hyphae, subterranean
  • reproduce by releasing spores (produced sexually or aseuxually), carried by the wind, can grow in moist environments

  • Fungi can be...

  • eaten
  • added to bread dough to make it rise
  • be added to milk to make cheese
  • used to ferment beer and wine
  • used to make medicine, like antibiotics
  • helpful to plants (lichen and tree: symbiotic relationship)

Tonight (2/16) for Homework

  1. Finish Protist Lab, UP 27-31
  2. Read Chapter 15 on Protists
  3. UP 39-40 and 41-43
  4. Nature project due 3/2
  5. Moodle Notes

next scribe: Yvette

2 comments:

  1. This post is amazing. You covered all of the major points of the notes that we took in class which was really helpful for me. Plus the multiple pictures were extremely interesting and helped me understand better what was being said. Nice work!

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  2. great post, it covered basically everything we went over in class. and the pictures were really good, too.

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