This is actually a video that I took, so I'm not sure its gonna work. If you can't get it to play, I'll just tell you, its the sound of crickets chirping, more accurately known as stridulation. There are four different types of cricket stridulation. First is the Calling Sound. It is quite loud and used to attract females while repelling other males at the same time. The Courting Song is used when a female is close and is very quiet. There is a certain chirp which is used when one male cricket senses another male cricket, it is quite aggressive. Lastly there is a short song which is used after mating has occurred.
Radial Symmetry
This is a picture of a type of sea urchin shell. The shell is radially symmetrical meaning that it has no clear sides other than it's top and bottom. The entirety of the shell radiates out from a vertical axis which passes through it's center.
Gymnosperm Leaf
This is a picture of Pine Needles. Pine trees are gymnosperms, meaning that they possess a vascular system and produce seeds but do not have flowers.
Basidiomycete
Its kind of hard to see in this photo, but this is a mushroom. More importantly, it is a gilled mushroom , (meaning it has those parallel flaps under the top, like Portebellos) and therefore a basiodiomycete. Basidiomycota is a phylum in the Fungi Kingdom.
Ectotherm
This is a fish I found while sailing today. Sadly he is dead. But before he died, he was an ectotherm. Being an ectotherm means that you largely rely on your environment to regulate your body temperature and subsequently your metabolic processes.
Auxin producing area of a plant
Auxin is a plant hormone which, in short, triggers growth and controls plant behavior. In this picture you see newly developed grape tomatoes, which are still growing. The effect the auxin has in this scenario is isodiametric expansion, or fruit growth.
Anther and Filament of Stamen
As you can see in this picture, part of a flower has been removed to expose the stamen and pistil within. The stamen consists of an anther and a filament. The anthers are the yellow fuzzy things on top of the skinny tubes. They are covered in pollen, a flower's sperm. When a pollinator comes to this flower either attracted by its color or by the promise of a tasty snack, it will inadvertently cover itself in pollen from the anther. When it then flies to another flower it will transfer said pollen to the second flower's stigma.
Heterotroph
This is a picture of my dog Charlie. Charlie, like you and me and mushrooms, is a heterotroph. This means that instead of fixing carbon from the air, he must consume carbon in organic compounds. Charlies metabolism can then brake down these compounds and use the carbon for growth.
Stigma and style of carpel
The carpel is a female reproductive organ of a flower. It consists of a stigma, style and ovary. When pollen is transferred to a flower by a pollinator, it lands on the stigma. Here, a pollen tube will penetrate the carpel from the pollen grain and create a tunnel of sorts through the style to the ovary. It will then connect to a single ovule (gamete) and the sperm from the pollen grain will travel down the tube to fertilize an ovule.
Flower Ovary
This is an ovary of a flower. As you can see it has been cut open to show the ovules. The ovary is the part of the carpel which houses the ovules, or female gametes. Once these gametes have been fertilized, the ovules will become seeds and the ovary will mature into fruit. It can then fall, or be carried to another location by an animal, where the seeds will plant and grow into a new flower.
Autotroph
This spider plant is an autotroph. Autotrophs take simple elements from their environment and fix them into complex molecules.This spider plant does this in a process known as photosynthesis. During this process the plant will fix six carbon dioxide molecules with six water molecules with the energy of the sun to produce glucose and oxygen.
Detritivore
This is a slug. Slugs are detritivores, meaning they consume dead or decaying plant and animal mater, even feces, for nutrients.
Pollen
This yellow looking stuff on my fingers is pollen. Pollen is produced on the anthers of flowers and acts as the flowers sperm. When the pollen lands on a stigma, it will create a pollen tube stretching all the way down through the style to the ovary. Here it ill allow the sperm within the pollen to fertilize a single ovule.
No comments:
Post a Comment