Roundworm Dissection

This is the roundworm I had for my dissection and it is a male. I know it is a male because of the "hooked" side of it, shown above.

This is when we had it dissected and those squiggly, spaghetti-looking things you can see inside it, is its testes.

That flat, ribbon-like thing sticking out of it is its intestine, through which its food goes.

Porifera

These are some examples of the many sponges that inhabit the ocean. All these sponges are actually not plants, they are animals! Sponges are categorized in the phylum called Porifera. Porifera meaning, an animal with holes. I will be talking about the seven essential functions in an animal, regarding sponges:

1. Feeding: Sponges are filter feeders. The reason they have holes in them is so the water can constantly flow throughout their whole body, so that they can obtain food and nutrients by filtering the water. Sponges mostly feed on bacteria and food particles that flow in the water.

2. Respiration: Sponges respire (receive oxygen) when the water flows through their holes. The type of respiration that sponges use is called osmosis. The water flows in through their pores and once the filtering is done, the water leaves the sponge through the osculum (the main hole on the top).

3. Circulation: Sponges have no circulatory system. They do not have any specialized techniques to transport oxygen, food, and nutrients throughout their bodies. Instead, the water flow through the holes cover for this. The circulation of the water gets food and nutrients in the sponges. 

4. Excretion: Sponges do not have an excretory system either. But, sponges do remove mineral particles that threaten to block the ostia. Archeocytes transport them through the mesohyl and dump them into the outgoing water current. Once again, they use the flow of water to remove wastes.

5. Response: Sponges do not have a nervous system. They do not have nerves or anything like that. However, strangely, sponges do react to stimuli.

6. Movement: Sponges do not have proper skeletons, but they do have something called a mesohyl, that functions as an endoskeleton. It is the only skeleton in sponges that encrusts hard surfaces such as rocks. Sponges do not move, they normally just stay in one place. But, this is for adult sponges. Juveniles are motile. Adult sponges do not move, however, there are some sponges that move 1-4mm per day, because of amoeba-like movements of pinacocytes and other cells.

7. Reproduction: Sponges are neither male nor female. Sponges can reproduce sexually and asexually. Asexual reproduction requires only one parent, and it is done by budding. This is when a piece of a sponge breaks off and forms an entirely new one, that is identical to its parent. For sexual reproduction, a "male" sponge releases sperm that flows in the water until it finds another "female" sponge of the same species. The sperm then enters the sponge through its outer pores, where it will fertilize the egg. The egg will turn into larvae that will eventually attach itself to the ocean floor and grow into an adult.  

Tapeworms

Tapeworms are from the phylum Platyhelminthes and tapeworms are parasitic flatworms from the class Cestoda. These tapeworms from the class Cestoda generally live in the digestive tract of vertebrates as adults and they are often in the bodies of many different animals as juveniles. The tapeworm has a long, flat body made up of a head, a neck, and a chain of segments, or sections. A chain can be made up of 3 to more than 4,000 segments and range in length from less than one inch to more than 75 feet. Tapeworms have no digestive system. They absorb food through their body walls directly from the host's intestine. Symptoms of tapeworm infections are not easy to detect. Because of this, infections are often not detected at all. Most of the time there no symptoms. Sometimes there is abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, and more, but not quite often. To get rid of tapeworms, you can kill them using drugs that don't harm the host.

For more information, go to:
http://animal.discovery.com/worms/tapeworm-info.htm

Plant Photo Journal

Mosses:

The environment in which I found these mosses was a damp, cold, kind of wet environment. There was water nearby too. It was a place that would have a lot of water left after it rained. Mosses need to live in these moist environments because they need a lot of water. They need a lot of water because they have swimming sperm that needs water to swim through, in order to get to the egg. Also, mosses are non-vascular, meaning they do not have special tubes that transports nutrients and water throughout the whole plant. This is why mosses live in wet environments, they need direct water. The fact that they are non-vascular is why they grow close to the ground. They lack the vascular tissue (the tubes) needed to get water and nutrients to the cells high above ground. Mosses can grow on rocks because they can grow anywhere that is moist, or wet. Also, mosses do not have roots that anchor into dirt. Mosses have rhizoids which are root-like structures that anchor the moss to the ground. They can anchor a moss onto a rock.

Ferns:

This is the underside of the fern shown above. I can see some sori. 

The environment in which I found these ferns was a wet, moist environment, and one of them was actually right beside a little stream of water. Ferns need to live in moist environments because they also have swimming sperm that needs water to swim to the egg. Ferns are different from mosses because they can grow tall, they have big, long stems, and they have proper leaves called fronds. They are vascular. Because they are vascular, they can grow bigger. The vascular tissue transports nutrients and water throughout the whole plant, including high above the ground. This is why ferns can grow big. Their stems support them too, helping them to stay up. Ferns need to grow in soil because they have roots, and these roots anchor into soil, and obtain water and minerals from the soil for the fern.

Gymnosperms:

These are the male cones.

These are the female cones.

These are the male cones.

This is a female cone.

Some adaptations that gymnosperms have that allows them to live in varied environments (such as cold, harsh environments) is their needle-like leaves. These leaves are an adaptation to withstand harsh climates. Also, gymnosperms produce seeds, which are able to withstand droughts and cold temperatures because of their dry, inactive state. Pollination is different from fertilization because pollination is when the pollen grain comes in contact with the female structures of a gymnosperm. Fertilization is when a sperm cell joins with an egg cell, and produces a diploid zygote. The structures involved in pollination are the pollen cones, the pollen grains, and the seed cones. The structures involved in fertilization are the sperm cells, the egg cells, and the pollen tubes.

Angiosperms:

A dicot.

The branched veins on this leaf show that it is a dicot.

A dicot.

The branched veins on this leaf show that it is a dicot.

A monocot (grass).

The parallel veins on this grass leaf show that it is a monocot.

A monocot (corn).

The parallel veins on this corn leaf show that it is a monocot.

Angiosperms are well adapted to life on land because they have many different strategies to reproduce. They produce pollen which does not need water to get to another plant, it gets blown away by the wind. The fact that angiosperms do not need water to reproduce, is a good reason for a plant to be assumed well adapted to life on land. Angiosperms have other strategies too, like having colorful and scented petals to attract pollinators, in order to disperse the pollen to other plants. Also, angiosperms produce fruit with seeds in them, and these fruits are made for animals to eat, so that later, the animal that eats the fruit will poop out the seeds. If the seeds are in a good place, they will grow another plant. These are some seed dispersal strategies that angiosperms use, and they also show that angiosperms are well adapted to life on land. The purpose of the fruit that is produced from an angiosperm, is that it is a protective covering for the seeds, unlike gymnosperms, which have no protective covering around the seeds. Also, the fruit is produced for seed dispersal (explained above).

Flower Dissection Lab

Flower Structure:

This is the stamen of the flower. The top, brown part is called the anther, which produces pollen. The green stem-like thing that is attached to the anther is called a filament. The anther and filament are both male flower parts.

These are the petals of the flower I dissected. Petals are neither male nor female. They are just petals.

The brown part on the top of this stem-like thing in this photo is called a stigma. The stem-like thing is called a style.

This is the ovary of the flower (bottom part). Together the stigma, style, and the ovary make up the female part of the flower called the pistil.

The Ovary:

When I cut the ovary in half and looked at it under a dissecting microscope, I actually saw the ovules. They looked like small, green balls, kind of like peas.

Pollen:

This is the pollen of my flower under a microscope. They look like tiny little seeds. They kind of look like shells with something in them.

Pollination:

Pollination is the transfer of pollen from the anthers of a plant, to the stigma of a plant. This is required to happen if the plant wants to reproduce. The structures that are involved in pollination are the anthers, which make the pollen in the first place, and the stigma, which has a sticky substance on it that helps the pollen to stick onto it. There are two different types of pollination: self-pollination and cross-pollination. Self-pollination occurs when pollen is transferred from an anther of a flower, to its own stigma. The benefit of this is that it is easy for a plant to reproduce (using this technique) if there is a lack of pollinators to spread the pollen to other plants. Cross-pollination is when the pollen from one plant is transferred to the stigma of another plant. The benefit of this technique is that there is more diversity in a species of a plant. There will be more beneficial genes in a species of a plant. This is good because there is a smaller chance for the species to go extinct, if it gets infected by a disease.

Angiosperm Classification:

The flower that I dissected in the lab today was a monocot plant. Here is proof:

Monocots have floral parts (petals) that occur in 3's, or multiples of 3. The plant I dissected had six petals, which is a multiple of three, so it is a monocot.

Monocots have leaves with parallel veins. This is a leaf from my flower. As you can see, it has veins running parallel to each other.

Monocot Or Dicot?

This is a root of a plant and it is from a dicot, because the vascular bundles are in a ring shape. This indicates that the plant is a dicot.

This is a leaf of a plant and it is from a monocot plant because a monocot has leaves with parallel veins, or vascular bundles. These vascular bundles are nice and straight, so it is a monocot.

This is a stem of a plant and it is from a dicot because the vascular bundles are, again, in the shape of a ring. 

Skunk Cabbage Plant

This is a Skunk Cabbage plant. The reason it has this name is pretty simple, it gives off a foul odor, often mistaken for the odor of a skunk. The weird thing is that it uses this smell to attract bugs. I think that is pretty cool because I've heard of bugs being attracted to plants because of color, but not by smell! Another weird fact, stated near the end of the video, is that this plant can be used for cooking! How can a skunk-like smelling plant be used to make food? For more information, watch the video shown above.

Extreme Plant

This scary-looking plant is called the Hydnora Africana. It looks a lot like a venus fly-trap plant, but even worse! This plant smells like dung because one of its favorite visitors is the dung beetle. Eventually the dung beetle crawls into this plant's jaw-like leaves, and then, rather than eat the beetle, it instead traps the beetle alive for a short period of time. The Hydnora Africana's goal is for the beetle to lose bodily fluids so the fluids can pollinate it. After being pollinated the plant opens its mouth, letting the beetle go.

Pinecones and Acorns

The main difference between pinecones and acorns is that pinecones have seeds and acorns do not. Pinecones come from coniferous pine trees (coniferous meaning cone bearing) and acorns come from deciduous oak trees. Acorns are dispersed because of all the animals that eat them. Either they are eaten and later expelled from the animal when it goes to toilet, after which they grow, or when squirrels bury their acorns they often forget one or two, so then the acorns grow there. Pinecones disperse themselves by dispersing their seeds (pollen) using the wind. One thing similar between pinecones and acorns is that they both grow on trees.

Pinecone Humpty Dumpty

Gymnosperm Slide

This is a cross section of a needle of a gymnosperm tree.

This is a cross section of a pollen cone of a gymnosperm tree.

Plant Parts Under A Microscope

This is a general cross section of a root of a vascular plant, shown under a microscope on medium power (100x). The major functions of roots are to absorb water and nutrients, anchor the plant body to the ground, and store food and nutrients. The xylem and phloem, tube-like structures, help the roots to distribute the water and nutrients throughout the plant, and to all the cells high above ground.

This is a general cross section of a stem of a vascular plant, shown under a microscope on low power (40x). The major functions of stems is to provide support for the plant, and stems also connect the leaves to the roots so that the water and nutrients can be transported from the roots, through the stem, and into the leaves. Woody and herbaceous stems are different because woody stems are hard, and they grow taller and bigger. Some plants with woody stems are shrubs and your average tree. Herbaceous stems are much softer and plants with these stems are usually short and small. This is because these stems don't grow additional tissues, like woody stems. Plants with herbaceous stems consist of herbs, crops, broccoli, generally your basic backyard garden plants.

This is a general cross section of a leaf of a vascular plant, shown under a microscope on high power (400x). The major functions of leaves are to obtain gas exchange, and sunlight for photosynthesis. Also, they help the plant to respire, and they store food material. The chemical reaction for photosynthesis occurs when the plant obtains carbon dioxide, water, and light. Using these things the plant produces oxygen, sugar, and water. Stomata are important to plants because plants mainly lose their water through these spaces, which allows transpiration. Also, stomata let carbon dioxide through for photosynthesis, which is why stomata are important to us too, because since they let carbon dioxide through, photosynthesis occurs, which means we get more oxygen.