Mesozoic+era+(The+quick+and+the+dead)

Unit 6 Overview of Lecture and Discussion Topics:
As the course continues forward to the Mezozoic era, students see that living organisms evolved specific adaptations that were selected for living on terrestrial Earth (e.g. phototropism in plants and thermoregulation in animals). This unit also begins to illustrate the connections between organisms (e.g. the evolution of seeds, flowers and fruit leading to the success of both plants and animals). Students also learn how both plants and animals communicate (e.g. hormones, animal behavior etc). The unit wraps with an understanding of the complexity of the nervous system and how it allows animals to sense, respond to and communicate changes in their environment.

Activities and Laboratories:

 * Activity – [|Famous Beaks]
 * Students discover whether variations in beak size can make a diﬀerence in ﬁnch survival and evolution. In the activity students measure the beak size of medium ground finches and then become “beaks” to test their food-gathering skills, graph the ﬁnches and seeds on Daphne Major, and see whether changes in the environment can push the ﬁnches toward a diﬀerent beak (SP 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6).
 * Big idea #4 Laboratory Investigations:
 * Fruit Fly Behavior Lab. Students design their own controlled experiments to investigate a question they have about animal behavior (kinesis and taxis in isopods, fruit fly behavior with respect to selected stimuli). The entire laboratory and experimental design and analysis will be written in the laboratory research notebook (SP 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).
 * [|Jumpin’ the Gap]: Students act out communication at the neural level by behaving as vesicles, neurotransmitters, receptors, secondary messengers and transporters (SP 1, 7).

Chapters from Campbell and Power Points:

 * 25. The History of Life on Earth || [[file:Earth before life.ppt]] ||
 * 29. Plant Diversity II: Evolution of Seed Plants || [[file:Chapters 29-30 Diversity of Plants.ppt]] ||
 * 38. Angiosperm Reproduction ||  ||
 * 39. Plant Responses to Internal and External Signals || [[file:Chapters 35-39 Plant Morphology, Growth, Transport and Control Systems.ppt]] ||
 * 54. Community Ecology || [[file:Community Ecology.ppt]] ||
 * 51. Animal Behavior ||  ||
 * 48. Neurons, Synapses and Signaling || [[file:Chapters 48-50 Nervous Skeletal and Muscular Systems.ppt]] ||
 * 49. Nervous Systems ||  ||