Biology 11

The main theories relevant to me that reoccurred throughout the semester were mainly characteristics of living things and how they applied to all of the kingdoms we worked with. A main concept that I learnt lots about and knew little about before taking bio 11 was evolution, it was important to me because it's a huge part in everything around us, how everything is today, and what it all came from. Some things I found interesting in biology was how all of the phylums are connected to eachother, and how things are classified in different phylums but still have things in common. This is the part I liked most because after one or two phylas I started to understand what we were learning and connect them to other things I know and things that aren't just in this class. I liked the things we learnt and felt I took a lot out of this class and really enjoyed the teaching and how this class worked which helped me enjoy what I was learning in this class.  

Aquarium

Kingdom: Animilia 

Phylum: Cnidaria 

Class: Scyphozoa

Characteristics: Scyphozoans exhibit the main characteristics of cnidarians. They have radial symmetry and are diploblastic, meaning that their body wall consists of the outer epidermis (ectoderm) and the inner gastrodermis (endoderm), which are separated by mesoglea. They have nematocysts, which are characteristic of the phylum. They undergo alternation of generations, with the medusa form being dominant. Scyphomedusae are the "jellyfish" with which most people are familiar.

Arthropoda

Characteristics 

- exoskeleton 

- jointed legs 

- compound eyes

- segmented bodies 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bBHKHhgjeM

I thought this video about arthropods was interesting because it covered most of the important things about the phylum and different classes, in a short interesting video. It was interesting to see the differences between the different classes but still see how they are all very connected to eachother and the phyla Arthropoda. 

Echinodermata Lab

I chose the starfish lab because it was my favorite dissection out of them all the different animal dissections we did. I liked it because it was interesting to see into the body cavity once cutting the outer layer off, and taking out the mushy digestive glands in each arm. I also liked this unit because most things I didn't understand before I got to properly learn which helped me with the unites following the Echinoderms.