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This year's ecology project will be less ambitious than last year's, but you will still have the opportunity to learn a ton about ecology by studying the relationships and interactions happening in your jars.
There are four components to the project, in addition to the actual jar. The four components are:
- Observation Journal: Record detailed, quantitative, extensive observations about your ecosystem every day if possible. There is a sample journal page attached below.
- Organism List: For each organism you can find and identify, record its appearance, size, and scientific name. You may only be able to find part of its name since every organism has at least seven names: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, species.(and SuperOrders etc. etc.) Also, organisms include members of each kingdom: Plant, animal, protist, fungi, bacteria. You may use the sample form below, called ID organisms.
- Energy and Nutrient Web: This part of the project requires research. If an organism is surviving in your jar, it is part of the nutrient and energy cycles happening in your jar. In other words, it is getting nutrients and energy from other organisms, and is likely providing nutrients and energy to other organisms somehow. You can find some of these relationships through researching the organisms you have observed. You must organized your organisms into three categories (producers, consumers, and decomposers), and you must use the colour red for energy flow and the colour green for nutrient flow. At right is a quick example.
- Group Website: Groups of four or five students will work together to create a website for this project. Criteria will be discussed later.
Google Sites
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