Unit 9 Reflection

    In this Unit, we learned about the taxonomic classification of animals. Taxonomy is the classification of animals into groups that start broad and become more refined. Taxonomy helps us see the evolutionary relationships of different animals because animals that share more taxonomical levels will be more closely related and have a more recent common ancestor. The Taxonomic levels are the following: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. This is the current organization of animals; the original system was created by Carl Linnaeusus in the 1700s, meaning that microscopic organisms weren't considered life. The original system divided all living things into plants and animals. Another major change was the discovery that bacteria and archaea. We then learned more about Bacteria and Archaea. Eukarya was divided up into talking about the different kingdoms. We spent a vodcast looking into plantae and learning the different classifications such as mosses (bryophyta) that are nonvascular and don't have seeds, pterophyta (ferns) which are vascular but have no seeds. We also learned about plants that have vascular systems and seeds such as the angiosperms and gymnosperms, the prior having seeds dispersed in fruit and the latter having seeds dispersed in cones. Angiosperms can be divided into monocots and dicots depending on how many leaves sprout first and their structure. We then learned about Animalia. This was divided into 2 vodcasts on invertebrate which account for 98% of all animals and 2 vodcasts on chordates.
    I would want to learn more about Archaea because we didn't learn much about them and they don't seem different enough from bacteria to be a separate domain. I would also want to learn about the split from bacteria and archaea. I would want to learn more about the main kingdoms and phylum in bacteria and archaea like we did with Eukarya. I would like to learn more about protista, fungi, and plantae because we learned more about Animalia. I would want to learn more about the evolutionary timeline of the organisms we learned about and when they evolved and split from their ancestors.

    One of the main projects of this unit was the what on Earth evolved presentations (you can see mine right here). In this projects, we got to pick an important organism, and give a 4-8 minute presentation on all the information of the organism. For my organism, I chose Australopithecus, a genus of hominids that gave rise to the genus homo. I talked about the many species in the genus and their differences. The most important characteristics of this organism is that it was the first bipedal hominid and gave rise to the homo genus which eventually evolved into modern day humans. I learned a lot about my topic, but my presentation wasn't clear and I had to read off my notes. Instead of writing a post it note of what I should say, I had an entire script in my hand and made no eye contact. I should try memorizing my presentation better so that I could make more eye contact and be more engaging. I was able to not procrastinate and give late work this unit, but I am concerned about this upcoming test because of all the information condensed in this unit. Overall, though, I am happy with my progress in this unit.