Ecosystems Grade 5
Moth that can absorb Bat radar
PART I Insects and their Food: Adaptations and Food Getting
1. Examine any of several insects and look at their mouth parts. How do they eat? What do they eat? Use a hand lens to examine any of several preserved or live insects.
2. Review mouthparts from the following chart:
3. Review with students the way in which insects get their food:
• Sucking mouthparts, moths and butterflies, sip nectar from flowers by using a tube and sucking out the liquid. Mosquitos suck blood, cicadas and leafhoppers and true bugs suck plant juices. Some true bugs suck other insects blood!
True bug, mosquito, moth
• Lapping mouthparts . Bees an flies use their mouths to sponge-up liquid food. Bees go for nectar, flies go for anything that they can sponge-up, (This makes flies particularly nasty as they place their sponge on everything and so move bacteria to the food they land on.
Fly and bee mouthparts
• Chewing mouthparts
Beetle and Grasshopper . (Also here would be roaches, mealworms, fly larvae, lady bugs)
4. Mouthpart design can change with complete metamorphosis of some insects. Butterfly larvae have chewing mouthparts, the adults are sucking, for example.
FOCUSING ON A DECOMPOSER
Soldier Flies are immense eaters.
PART II. Food Preferences
How insects and arthropods are designed often indicates what kinds of foods they eat. Sometimes, however, we are not sure about what kind of food is desired because chewing mouthparts can eat both plant and animal material. So, a taste test in necessary!
Sow bugs and lady bugs are ideal for this experiment.
1. Find a suitable container such as a large plastic tray or shoebox. Place food types at each corner of the box or tray. For sow bugs, use cracker, potato, sugar water, and a protein source such as cheese or meat. If an experimental procedure emphasizing a control is desired, make one corner empty. Place a number of creatures in the center of the box and cover the experiment with a cloth or lid to allow sow bugs to find their corner. After 1 minute intervals check the apparatus and count to bugs near each food. If Lady bugs are used, water, honey water, lettuce, and cracker could be used.
2. Collect data over several minutes. For example:
3. Interpret the data and summarize what food type the sowbug prefers.
4. Ask students why they think sow bugs would prefer this food type. Is this something they might find in the soil?
Assessment
The process of setting-up an experiment and data table is the emphasis here. A rubric can be used to evaluate how students have set-up the experiment and what sort of data table is used. Some considerations may be: procedure described adequately, control used, equal space around foods and bugs, proper labeling of data sheet, equal time intervals, and summary of what data demonstartes.
Materials for Part II
• Food stuffs
• Boxes/cloth
• Access to clock
PART III. Extension
Determine what PLT or PW extension may be appropriate to continue the discussion about adaptations and how they provide an opportunity for an animal to get food.