Unit 9 Reflection

In Unit 9, we learned about the classification and taxonomy of life on Earth. In this unit, we discovered the several billions of species that lived and evolved on the planet, creating the environment we live in today. In order to study and observe the evolution and survival of organisms, we use taxonomy to name and classify these organisms. Organisms are classified into 8 different taxonomic levels: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species, depending on their phylogeny(evolutionary relationships) and their characteristics. Based on biochemical and genetic differences, life is organized into three domains: the Archaea who live in extreme places like hot springs and digestive tracts of animals, bacteria who can be harmful or helpful, and eukarya which include animals, plants, fungi, and protists. Domain bacteria include mostly unicellular organisms which come in varieties of shapes and act as decomposers, nitrogen fixers, and can even be used in biotech. Viruses, on the other hand, are small nonliving infectious particles that are enclosed in a protein coat or membranous envelopes, which can help virus infection.

Domain Eukarya is the largest domain and contains animals, plants, fungi, and protists. Fungi are made of chitin and hyphae, which helps absorb food, and act as food, antibiotics, and pathogens. Plants on the other hand are photosynthetic and come in four main phyum: Bryophyta(mosses, seedless, nonvascular), Pterophyta(ferns, vascular, roots, leaves), Gymnosperms(cone-bearing plants, pollen, seeds), and angiosperms(flowering plants, fruit). Finally, animals are the most diverse and come in many different shapes and sizes, like invertebrate(Porifera, Cnidaria, Platyhelminthes, Molluska, Annelidia, Arthropods, and chordata, which are mostly vertebrates,(Agnatha, Condricthyes, Osteicthyes, Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves, and Mammalia).

A large portion of our unit was dedicated to the What on Earth Evolved Presentation, where we had to pick a significant species in the evolution of life and do a presentation on that species. For my presentation I picked the honeybee, and as I worked on my presentation I definetely felt a lot of freedom and choice as I created my slides, learning a lot about the honeybee along the way. Probably the hardest part was giving the actual presentation, which had to be between 4 and 8 minutes, in front of the whole class. Luckily learned that practice makes perfect (the easy way) and the presentation was pretty smooth, even though I was a little nervous. In the endd, not only did I learn that honeybees are essential to our environment and our lives, I also learned that giving a good presentation requires knowing and understanding your information and practicing it before hand to make it as good as it can be.