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Spiders: An Organism for Teaching Biology Vocabulary and Concept Application
Many biology and environmental science texts have a chapter on basic ecology. Check your school text. Our school uses Global Science by John W. Christensen. This information can be found in chapter 2, pp. 97-107. The video: Survival Species: Amazing World of Spiders is also both interesting and informative.
Concept Application. Mt. Graham red squirrels are endangered. How do you know how many there are? Bird banding is used for conducting a census and other studies. Any animal that is mobile and active could be the subject of a mark-recapture study. People at the grocery store--even if there is an abundance of food, people only buy a certain amount because they can only eat so much. This is an example of a density independent factor. Food supplies are reduced only by a certain amount each week unless there is an increase in the local grocery shopping community (births, new people moving in). Wasps that hunt for white flies to lay their eggs in them are density dependent--if there are more eggs than flies, Ana be laid killing more flies. Wasps, like flies, have a short life cycle and can respond to an abundant food supply through increased reproduction and survival to quickly take in larger percentages of the fly food supply. The
University of Arizona
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics General Biology Program for Secondary Teachers warder@email.arizona.edu http://biology.arizona.edu/sciconn |
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