Nicolas Reed Science Blog

Ditomopyge scitula pygidium by  Dwergenpaartje Summary:        Part of understanding evolution is understanding the fact that all living things share a common ancestor and are related. One line of evidence of evolution is fossil records. Fossil records are observations seen of organisms that existed in the past. Four parts of fossil record are past lives, geologic time, paleoecology, and biodiversity. One example of past lives is growth rings in trees or shells. Growth rings tell us the number of years an individual lived. One example of geologic time is layers in rocks. Layers in rocks tell us which rocks and fossils are the oldest based on their relative positions. An example of paleontology is shapes of leafs edges, which tell us how the climate changes over time and the climate of certain time periods and places. Lastly, features that are shared by more than one species is an example of biodiversity. This tells us that species are related and can help...

Peppered moths  by  Khaydock Summary:        Natural selection is defined as the process by which favorable traits tend to increase in frequency over time. This is just one way animals can change however, animals can also adapt to their environment so that they are better suited for the current state of their habitat. One example of natural selection is with the peppered moth. The peppered moth has two common forms, the dark moth, and the light moth. The two different forms of moths became either less or more common based on the more frequent type of tree (dark tree or light tree) in that generation. So before the 19th century, when the trees were light colored, the most common type of moth was the light colored moth due to how light colored moths were passing down their favorable trait (this favorable trait was being light colored, it was favorable due to how it made them better camouflaged). Whereas during the 19th century, when the trees were dark...

Evolucija skeleta konja  by Llez Summary:        Evolution is any change in the heritable traits within a population across generations. Evolution in simpler terms is the slow descent (or increase) with modification. It is changes in the genetic pool over time. Their are five mechanisms/driving forces of evolution. Those mechanisms, driving forces are genetic drift, mating with specific traits, mutations, gene flow, and natural selection.  Natural selection is a change in DNA (these changes are random) that is passed on into the next generation's gene pool. Genetic drift is the slow change of specific genes in a population. Two things that cause by the founder effect and bottlenecking. The founder effect is when a small sample from a population with a specific trait (or set of traits) moves to a different location (separate from the rest of the population) and only procreates within itself. Gene flow is the movement of genes from one population to an...

Nicolas Reed Ms. Garcia 8th Grade Science 10/5/18 We Are Not in A Sixth Mass Extinction        “ In a 2015 study , biologist Paul Ehrlich and his team argued Earth is in an era of mass extinction rivaling the one that killed the dinosaurs.” according to the Newsy article titled “Scientists Can't Agree If We're Really In A Mass Extinction” written by Sarah Schlieder. We are not in a 6th mass extinction. Rates are too slow for us to be in the middle of one and if we were in a mass extinction, then most species on Earth would already be extinct. Others that believe that we are in a sixth mass extinction are not looking at the complete story and not using valuable information to back up their opinion. Humans have simply not done enough to allow for such an event to happen, and if it were coming close to occurring, we would do everything in our power to make sure that it wouldn't. Furthermore, many professionals (scientists) have said that although it is possib...