Going Bananas In Biology!
Welcome to my Zootastic Zoology class.
Introdcution
My name is Asia Hoke and I am a senior biology major at Winston-Salem State University. During the spring semester, I signed up for a zoology course because the thought of learning about exotic animals and how they behave interest me. If you are searching for a course to take, hopefully I can persuade you to join this course by modeling to you what I've learned and accomplished.
Along with my interest in exotic animals, I honestly thought that this course would be an "easy A." Prior to taking this course, I thought that we would be learning about a new animal every week, and then being tested. In actuality, my stereotype was completely wrong. This class was based off of students lecturing the course. I am very fortunate that I was able to take this course because along with learning new things about animals, this course has also helped me sharpen my presentation skills along with being a good researcher.
Animal Taxon
Animal Taxon #1 and Animal Taxon #2 are two similar assignments that were given at two different time periods. Dr. Viscido provided each individual with a Phylum, Class, Order, or Subphylum. Based on the taxon provided, we had to create a powerpoint that discussed basic information on the animal, the reproductive biology, mating biology, ecology, evolution, behavior, sociality, and examples of these animals. The first taxon that I received the phylum Annelida, and the second taxon I received was the Order Primates. After completing the powerpoint, the second part of the assignment included completing an information literacy. I enjoyed the second animal presentation more than the first because primates were more interesting and they exhibit more behavioral characteristics than worms. An information literacy includes a list of all of your references used, a description of how and why they were used, and if they were reliable sources.
Personal Reflection
eBird
The purpose of the eBird assignment is to become familiar with bird species living in the environment near me. Before doing the assignment, my partner and I used an ebird app to determine which birds we could expect to see in our area during the month and season that we were in. After using the app to get an ideas of what we could potentially see, we used the same app to identify the birds we seen. My partner and I observed the birds for three days at the same location for 30 minutes a day. Out of the hundreds of species that we observed on the website prior to the outside observation, we only saw two species: Brown Creeper and the Northern Mockingbird. Before doing the activity, I frowned upon this because I didn't think bird watching would be a fun hobby, especially in the cold weather. After doing the assignment, I now find myself unconsciously searching for different birds.
eMammal
In real life, cameras are placed in natural habitats to capture movements and behaviors of animals to capture what they do when humans aren't around, and how they behave. The purpose of this activity is to use the e-mammal website to find pictures of a specific animal, and create a comic strip, or science fiction story that includes a main character. My comic strip is about Travis the Timid Tiger having an unsuccessful hunting experience. This was a fun activity because it allowed us to add a sense of humor while still focusing on animals and how they behave.
Adaptation
The goal of this assignment is to learn about the physical adaptations of an animal. The animal that I was assigned was a Plains Zebra. For this assignment, I listed 3 behavioral adaptations, a photograph of the animal, and 7 visual characteristics.
A cladogram is a branching diagram showing the cladistics relationship between different species. Looking at the cladogram, it is obvious that the gorilla and the human are closely related, and the pike is closely related to both the lungfish and the gorilla. We are able to make these observations based on derived traits.
Cladogram
