Updated Unit 2 Choice Board Competition

Ecosystems Choice Board Competition

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Week 1 - Live Class - Ecosystems

Click the link to access all 3 activities below to earn points. Complete as many activities as you can!!

Research & SHARE Extinct Animal

Mystery Pixel Picture

Ecosystem Edpuzzle

6 points

4 points

10 points

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African Elephants

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African elephants are the world's largest land animals. These gentle giants live in the grasslands and forests of Africa. They live in small family groups led by an older female. Their huge ears keep them cool, while their long trunks help them eat food and drink water. However, they face many problems that make them an endangered species. One big problem is poaching. People hunt them for their valuable ivory tusks. A single tusk can weigh up to 250 pounds and be sold for $1,500 per pound. Ivory is used to make products like jewelry and statues. Many people buy ivory products without knowing it hurts the elephants. Another challenge is habitat loss. Elephants need big spaces to move around. They lose their homes and food sources as people build cities and cut down trees for farmland. Groups that care about animals are working to create protected areas and national parks where elephants can live safely. These places have lots of space, food, and water. They also stop people from hunting elephants and trading ivory. People are being taught about how important it is to protect elephants.

Black Rhinos

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Black rhinos are critically endangered animals known for their large size and thick skin. They have a unique horn on their noses made of a material called keratin. Keratin is the same substance found in human hair and fingernails. Some cultures believe that rhino horns can be used as medicine. No scientific evidence supports the claims that rhino horns cure illnesses. However, hunters kill the rhinos and take their horns anyway. The horns are then sold on the black market. The black market is an illegal way to buy and sell goods. The high demand for rhino horns means buyers are willing to pay high prices for them. Many people are working hard to save the black rhinos by creating protected areas where the rhinos can roam freely. Rangers and guards patrol the area to keep the rhinos safe from hunters. Some laws ban the trade of rhino horns. Poachers are caught and punished. Some groups teach the public about black rhinos and how to appreciate and save them. Countries around the world must work together if black rhinos are to be protected from extinction.

Mountain Gorillas

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Mountain gorillas live high in the mountains of Africa. They are enormous and strong, with thick black fur. Thicker fur helps them survive the cold temperatures. Male gorillas can weigh up to 400 pounds. They like to eat leaves, shoots, stems, and fruits from plants. Mountain gorillas live together in family groups led by a strong male gorilla called a silverback. These gorillas are in danger of disappearing forever. Only about 1,000 of them remain in the whole world. One big threat for these gorillas is that people are cutting down the forests where they live. When the trees are gone, the gorillas do not have enough food or a safe place to live. When humans enter their forests, the gorillas can catch human diseases. They are often injured in traps set for other animals. But people are working very hard to help the mountain gorillas. There are special places called national parks where the gorillas can be safe. These parks have rangers who protect the gorillas from hunters. People also learn about the gorillas and visit the parks to see them, which raises money. The money is used to take care of the gorillas and their homes.

Red Wolves

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Red wolves have reddish-brown fur, a special mask on their faces, and slim bodies. They are very good at hunting small animals such as rabbits, rodents, and raccoons. Many red wolves lived in the southeastern United States long ago, but now only a few are left. They are in danger of disappearing forever because their homes have been taken away, people have hurt them, and they have mixed with coyotes. Often landowners mistake them for coyotes and shoot them. People have been trying to help the red wolves for a long time. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made a plan in the 1970s to keep them from going extinct. They created places where red wolves could live safely and have babies. Although the breeding programs have been successful, red wolves barely exist in the wild. Today, they can only be found in a small area of North Carolina. Scientists and others are working together to help the red wolves. They protect the places where red wolves live, put them back in safe areas, and teach others about them. They hope red wolves will return to live happily in the southeastern United States again.

Dodo Birds

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Dodos were flightless birds that lived on an island called Mauritius. They thrived because they had no natural enemies. There are drawings, paintings, and written accounts of what Dodos looked like. A dodo was about three feet tall and weighed up to 45 pounds. It had a chubby body, short wings, and a big hooked beak. The feathers were mainly grayish-brown, with curly ones on the rear end. Unfortunately, things went wrong for Dodos when European explorers came to the island in the late 1500s. Since the birds were comfortable around humans, it was easy for men to hunt them for food. The explorers also brought animals like dogs, cats, rats, and pigs, which wrecked the dodo's habitat. The combination of hunting and changes to their environment caused the dodo population to decrease quickly. The final recorded sighting of a dodo was in 1662. By 1700, they were all gone. Scientists do not know much about how dodos behaved or what they were like because only a few complete dodo bodies were saved. These remains are studied to try and understand their lives better. By doing this, scientists learn more about how ecosystems used to work a long time ago.

Passenger Pigeons

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Billions of passenger pigeons used to fly in the skies over North America. These graceful birds had slender bodies with beautiful blue-gray feathers. They had long, pointed wings that let them fly over long distances quickly and easily. Passenger pigeons liked to gather in huge groups called pigeon roosts. Their flapping wings and constant cooing created a kind of musical concert in the air. They also played an essential role in nature. They helped shape the forests of North America by eating and nesting in certain trees. Their habits affected where the trees grew and how the forests grew back. Sadly, humans caused the passenger pigeons to disappear. Flocks were so thick that hunting and killing many at once was easy. People also destroyed their homes by setting them on fire. The pigeons lost their main food sources of acorns and beech nuts. The last known passenger pigeon, Martha, died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. The extinction of these once-plentiful birds reminds people how much human actions can hurt the natural world.

Thylacines

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Thylacines lived in Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea. They were also called Tasmanian tigers or Tasmanian wolves. Thylacines were marsupials that carried their babies in a pouch. They had a unique look with a thin body and yellow-brown fur with dark stripes on its back that looked like tiger stripes. Its tail was also striped and carried stiffly like a kangaroo tail. Thylacines were nocturnal and carnivorous. They had jaws that could open unusually wide. They disappeared first on the mainland of Australia. Some thylacines existed on the island of Tasmania until the 1930s. They became extinct for many reasons. European settlers took over their habitats for grazing land. The settlers believed thylacines were eating their livestock. Cash bounties were paid to hunters for their dead bodies. Wild dogs competed with them for food. Diseases shortened their life spans. The last known thylacine died in a zoo in 1936. No thylacines have been found since then, although many people have claimed to have seen one.

Woolly Mammoths

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Woolly mammoths once roamed the Earth during the last Ice Age. They lived in large northern hemisphere areas. Awooly mammoth had shaggy fur and long, curved tusks. It could be 10-12 feet tall and weigh 6-8 tons. A thick layer of fat underneath the skin was an adaptation that helped it survive in harsh, cold environments. These herbivorous giants grazed on grasses, sedges, and willow. Their large size and incredible strength allowed them to bulldoze through snow and ice. These paths helped other animals find food and water for other animals during the icy winters. Woolly mammoths became extinct around 4,000 years ago because of warmer weather and hunting by humans. However, remains of wooly mammoths have been preserved in the frozen tundras of Siberia. Scientists studying the remains have learned important facts about their structure and habits. Some believe that DNA from their teeth could be used to bring the wooly mammoth back to life. Others are not sure that recreating them would be the right thing to do.

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Week 2 - Live Class - Populations

Click the link to access all 3 activities below to earn points. Complete as many activities as you can!

Article & Crossword

Meme War

Patterns PaDlet

6 points

4 points

10 points

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Article Intro

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Living things are dying out faster now than ever before. This means big changes for all of the other living things on Earth. Biodiversity is the number of organisms in one place, which can mean the number of different types of living things and how many individuals of each type are living there. When living things die out, we lose biodiversity, which leads to more things dying out, as they lost their food source. We can't predict what species will die out years from now, but we can make guesses based on the number of those living things alive today. Many of these extinctions will affect groups of animals that we have yet to discover. Most of these groups of animals that will die out live in tropical rainforest. These places are the most diverse places on Earth, but are quickly being obliterated by people cutting down trees. Between 1970 and 2011, almost 20% of the Amazon rainforest was lost. Humans are causing this to happen, but there are countless things we can do to protect those organisms, which we will study now.

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Biodiversity Loss

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Biodiversity is not the same everywhere. One lake may have over 500 kinds of one kind of fish, while another in a nearby location could have less than 100. Biodiversity loss is when the number of organisms in one place dies out or has to move to find food or water. It might not seem like a big deal for one type of animal to die out, but the loss of that one kind of organism leads to other animals dying out also. This is happening quickly in rainforests, like the one shown below. There is a lot of biodiversity here, but people are cutting down the trees for wood and for space to farm. This is causing many organisms to become extinct, which will shortly have an effect on people. People require living things to survive, just like all life on Earth. However, people are the only organisms that are permanently destroying nature, including many of the things that we all need.

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People and Biodiversity: Farming

Genetic diversity is the different genes in one group of animals. For example, one cat can have four babies that all have different colors. This happens so that if one color of the fur is bad for survival, that cat will die. It then can't go on to have children that are that same color that caused it to die and that bad gene will go away permanently. The cats that have colors that don't die will go on to have children that same color. This is imperative for species to be able to live in places that are always changing. You can study genetic diversity to check the biodiversity of a location. Potatoes are an example of genetic diversity in crops. If a farmer solely plants one type of seed, then if something happens to that crop, like a disease, then all of the crops are gone. In Ireland in 1885 the potatoes crops got sick and all of them died. Since that was the only crop planted, many people had no food whatsoever and either died or had to move. Monoculture is when just one kind of crop is grown in the same area on a farm. Farmers need to ensure that they don't have a group of clones and instead plant lots of different genetic individuals within a crop. This way if one gets sick, there might be a few that survive, instead of all of them being identical and dying from the same disease. Since the start of farming more than 10,000 years ago, humans have been breeding and selecting different kinds of crops to plant. How different the crops were as different as the people were. Here's what this means: Potatoes started to be grown 7,000 years ago in Peru and Bolivia. The people who lived there had no contact with other people because of the large mountains that separated them. The potatoes being grown there belong to seven species and thousands of different kinds. Each different type is bred to thrive at different heights, types of soil, and weather. Diversity is needed here considering the people cannot interact with one another, so they all need to make sure they are able to grow plenty food to survive. Being able to avoid disease is the best thing about biodiversity

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People and Biodiversity: Fishing

People can grow their own food and raise their own animals to eat, but they still get food from the wild. This mostly happens through ocean fishing. Some kinds of fishing are very dangerous, such as trawling, which happens when a large net is pulled by a boat across the ocean floor. It traps not only the fish people are looking for, but many animals that are in danger of dying out forever, like turtles and dolphins, are caught in the net and killed, too. Trawling also destroys the ocean floor itself, like when it damages the coral reefs that give homes to many living things. Countless people depend on fish to eat and sell, but there a fewer fish being caught today than ever before. Overfishing is taking one type of fish from the ocean faster than it can make more of its type. This doesn't usually cause one group of fish to die out, but it does actually transform the ocean that these fish live in. Not only do people lose a type of food when a group of fish dies out, but other animals who eat that food can also die out as a result. One way we can help solve this problem is by raising fish on a fish farm, so people can control the fish and where they live. This doesn't always work because this would lead to low genetic diversity, so if the fish got sick, all of them would perish. A better idea would be to uncover ways to control how much fish can be eaten and sold to provide fish a chance to make more fish.

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Article Conclusion

The earth is always changing and being changed. When this happens, groups of animals can be made to leave or become extinct. This leads to biodiversity loss, or when the number of different living things in a place dies out. Having genetic diversity, or differences in a group of the same living thing, is important because it can give a group of organisms a better chance at staying alive. If genetic diversity is low, like we see with monoculture, we risk that one crop getting sick and all dying out. We also see biodiversity loss from overfishing, taking fish from the ocean faster than fish can be born. People need to see that changing our Earth can lead to groups of organisms dying out, which not only affects those animals and the living things around them but at some point will affect people too. Now use what you learned to completed the Crossword Puzzle! Click the link below to access the puzzle.

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WEEK 3 - Live Class - Human Impacts

Click the link to access all 3 activities below to earn points. Complete as many activities as you can!

Vocab. Bingo

Spin the Wheel

Make a Passport

6 points

4 points

10 points

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