Camouflage

Practice Question

A recent New Zealand study compared the size, shape and pigmentation of hundreds of leaves of Pseudowintera axillaris (horopito, also known as the New Zealand pepper tree) and small Alseuosmia macrophylla (toropapa) plants, and found a match. Over a third of the leaves of the two species cannot be statistically distinguished from one another.  Toropapa were possibly eaten by moa before the arrival of humans quickly decimated the moa population.  Unless the plants are flowering or fruiting, the only fast way to tell them apart is to taste a leaf.  Horopito leaves a pungent, hot peppery taste and a numb tongue when the leaf is chewed, while toropapa is highly palatable.

Photo from: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/news/2016/06/making-a-mockery-out-of-our-native-plants

Name and describe the relationship between Pseudowintera axillaris and Alseuosmia macrophylla.  Discuss the adaptive advantages and disadvantages of the relationship to the two species of New Zealand flora, including any survival strategies they employ.

How Should I answer is describe what a definition is and the definition of what relationship. The relationship between Pseudowintera axillaries and Alseuosmia microphylls. Also discuss the adptaive and advantages and disadvantages of the relationship to the two species.

Migration & Homing

At the moment in our Biology class we are doing externals. The topic we are focusing right now is migration and homing.

Migration  is a journey with a return trip that is often once a year or one in a life often for reproduction or feeding.

Homing is a short trip home after searching for food or mates.

Animals can navigate when migrating and homing. They use 4 ways of navigating Visual Cues, Star compass , magnetic and sun compass. The Visual cues that animals have that helps them navigate are the landmarks , mountains , buildings, roads and forests. Animals such as birds can use motowats etc while migrating. Also bees used Digger wasp used comes as visual are where ' home'.  The change of land (development, deforestation) many harm navigater and migration. Turning out lights @ night. They use star compass to navigate. They used starts for navigation. Scientists put birds in a conservation/start dome changed the shy and looked at which way there were hopping (wanting to migrate) it changed as they moved the stars. Another navigation technique they use is magnetic. Some animals for example pigeons and salmon have been shown to sense and navigate using the earth's magnetic field. Experiments with magnets on pigeons beaks showed their navigation became confused. Lastly they also use the sun compass as an technique.  When the sun rises in the eats ad sets the west. Bees and the waggle dance. The number of waggles = distance, angle of middle = angle to the side of the sun.

My Sentence summaries for Innate and Learned.

Today for biology, we had to come up with a sentence that will help us with our external. There are 5 Characteristics of Innate Behaviour we were given to help us with our own sentence

• It can be passed to offspring (inherited from their parents).
• Even if offspring were raised away from their parents, they would still be able to do the behaviour because it is ‘intrinsic.’
• Every single member of the species will perform the behaviour in exactly the same way.
• Practising the behaviour will not develop it at all or make it better or changed at all.

The very first attempt at doing the behaviour will be 100% correct, as it is fully developed on the first try. No coaching or teaching is required, they can just do it.


My Sentence : It can be passed to offspring, which could be raised away from their parents. Every single member of the species will perform the behaviour in exactly the same way. This behaviour can’t be made  better or changed at all. The first attempt at doing the behaviour will be 100% correct.

The next task were are give to do is to go on activelylearn.:)

My Critter

My critter is called Flonty. which lives underground. It move up the concentration gradient of the chemical Name . Name the orientation in my animal and describe the adaptive value of the Flonty

Homeostasis assessment reflection

The assessment was alright. I thought I could have done better, I enjoyed the topic which was homeostasis, which was something new and very interesting to learn about. It also linked to diabetes, which is another interesting topic. This compared to year 12, this was easier and felt like less work , compared to last years assessment, it was quit difficult to get a high grade. The easiest bit was the negative feed back , writing about that was easy. Whereas with the homoestasis componenets was hard I couldn't find any resources. 2 tips to be successful listen to Miss in class, because she gives a lot of information, that too be honest I think I missed. Also another tip is find exemplers on the grade you want.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT DIABETES!!!

WARNING!!!! THE INFORMATION YOUR ABOUT TO READ IS NOT 100% CORRECT!! My name is Rachael and I am a year 13 at Tamaki College. We were told by our lovely biology teacher Ms Wells to write a post on about what we remember about diabetes on a assignment we did 2 years ago (year11) There are two types of diabetes - Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 diabetes is what your born with and cannot be prevented, but can be looked after  by medication , exercise and healthy food. Type 2 diabetes is caused by environmental factors such as junk food and lack of exercise..... and that's all I remember, I am sorry if this does not make sense, please bare with me as this is the first day back from a 2 month holiday. :D LOL