Darwin & The Theory of Evolution
After studying these animals, Darwin wrote a controversial book called "On the Origin of Species" in which he proposed that:
- Species can change over time
- New species come from pre-existing species.
- All species share a common ancestor
What are the Galapagos finches?
After the soot in the air from Industrial Revolution stained the trees and buildings, birds began to eat these because they were easier to spot.
What are lighter colored moths?
These are the five senses.
What are TASTE, TOUCH, SMELL, SIGHT, and HEARING?
This is the main source of energy in most ecosystems.
What is the sun?
The disaster of the Aral Sea started with this event as the government wanted to irrigate the desert for growing crops.
What is "divert two rivers"?
This book was revolutionary and controversial because it opposed many people's religious beliefs that all species were created by God and not related to each other.
What is Darwin's "On the Origin of Species"?
As a result of lighter colored moths being easier to spot by predators, the number of darker colored moths did this during the Industrial Revolution.
What is increase?
A catfish uses its 10,000 taste buds all over its body to do this in muddy waters.
What is "find food"?
The biosphere is a global ecosystem consisting of these two general groups.
The first group contains plants and animals.
The other groups contains materials like water, rocks, soil, and sand.
What are living and non-living things?
The Great Sparrow campaign in China was organized to eliminate sparrows who were eating too much grain. Once the sparrows were gone, this new problem was created.
The competition, or fight, for resources needed to live.
What is the struggle for existence?
After the peak of the Industrial Revolution passed, the population of lighter moths did this.
What is increase?
Thanks to the membrane in a cats eye called the tapetum lucidem, cats have an excellent sense of this.
What is "night vision"?
Each living thing in an ecosystem has a role to play in the food chain. They can fall into one of these three categories.
What are producers, consumers, and decomposers?
Thomas Austin brought 24 rabbits with him to Australia to create a rabbit population because he enjoyed rabbit hunting. He did not take into consideration this problem that would cause chaos for the Australian ecosystem for a long, long time.
Rabbits have no natural predators in Australia and their population increased very quickly destroying natural habitats for many native species.
The adaptation process to an environment in order to survive.
In this process, genetic traits that predispose organisms to survive are passed from parents to their offspring.
Organism that can't adapt have a low chance to survive or reproduce. Organisms that can adapt have a high chance to survive or reproduce.
What is natural selection?
Rat snakes have similar diets, are excellent climbers, and kill by constriction. However, they vary greatly in this category depending on their environments.
What is color?
Moles are blind. This means they do not have this sense. Instead, they depend on their sense of touch to move around.
What is "sight"?
What is "disturbing the balance"?
The Australian government tried to do these three things to decrease the rabbit population.
1. Hunt the rabbits.
2. Build rabbit proof fences.
3. Biological control using viruses (most effective)
According to Darwin, all species share this. Each specie, then, evolved from its own unique set of heritable genetic differences that accumulated gradually over long periods of time
What is a common ancestor?
The deer mice of Sand Hills evolved to to have a lighter fur color making them more difficult to spot in this short period of time on the evolutionary time scale.
What is 8,000 years?
Owls are nocturnal and hunt at night. Thanks to this very strong sense, they are able to hunt in the dark easily.
What is "sense of hearing"?
Give an example of a producer, a consumer, and a decomposer.
Producer: any plant that makes their own food through photosynthesis
Consumer: Animals, including humans that eat or consume other plants and animals.Decomposer: Bacteria, fungi, and other living things that cause decay and break down the waste products and dead tissue of plants and animals.
These were the major consequences for the Aral Sea and the people after the attempt to irrigate the desert.
People: The fishing industry was destroyed and people lost their jobs. The people in the towns nearby suffered water shortages. Winds transported dust and chemicals from the dry sea bed into towns where they caused respiratory illnesses and cancer.