Read the Overview and launch this ecolosystem simulator. Familiarize yourself with the simulator interface. Notice that you can control which species are present in your environment initially and what the diets of each species are. The types of species possible in the program are Plants (A,B,C), Herbivores (A,B,C), Omnivores (A,B) and one top Predator. You can control the diet of each by indicating what they feed on. By setting up different starting configurations you can investigate the evolution of this simulated ecological system.

A. In a couple of sentences describe what happens when you start with only two (A&B) and then all three plant species present.

When only A & B plant species are there and we run the stimulator, the population of Plant a increases and becomes maximum and that of plant B decreases to 0. As the time passes by, species of A decreases and that of B increases such that in long run we have equal distribution of Species A & B.

When we run the simulator with all the three plant species, The consequence of Plant A & B is same but there is no plant of type C.

In this case there are only producers. They harness the sun energy and grow. The favourable ones boom and the others are overshadowed in the process.

B. Describe how many herbivores and omnivores you added (and what they eat) in order to create an ecosystem in which all three plant species can coexist. (if you cannot accomplish the survival of Plant C describe your best configuration. Describe your ecologies by identifying the species present and their diet, for instance:

Omnivore A eats Herbivore A, Herbivore A eats plant A and plant B, Herbivore B eats plant A, All plants present.

All the three varieties of plant A, B & C co-exists when we add Herbivore A, B, & C

Herbivore A eats Plant A & C, Herbivore B eats Plant A & B and Herbivore C Eats Plant B & C.

Omnivore A eats Herbivore A & B and Omnivore B eats Herbivore B & C

Top Predator eats both Omnivore A & B. In this ecosystem all the varieties have a co-existence.

C. If you can accomplish part B, see if you can get all of the species to coexist. (limit your time on this entire experiment to 90 minutes)

D. If we assume that this simulation is a reasonable oversimplification of a typical ecosystems food web what does it tell us about biodiversity and ecology- are they robust or fragile? In general is an ecosystem’s biodiversity preserved as it responds to change?

Virtual Lab 6: Evolution: Sex and the Single Guppy

This simulation follows a set of real life experiments in evolution and natural selection. Familiarize yourself with the interface, guppies, guppy predators, and the experiment. Use an “even mix” of the different guppy color types to start. Run three experiments one with each of the combination of predators. Each experiment should run for five or more generations. Type your solutions in bold face text.

•   State the percentage that each color type makes up in your guppy population both before and after you have let five generations pass. With each experiment state a conclusion that is consistent with your observation.

1. Rivulus only

131 guppies

2. Rivulus and Acara

3. Rivulus, Acara and Cichlids.

•   What two selection pressures are operative?

Virtual Lab 7: Anatomy and Dissections

A. Dissections

1. Earthworm

A. Identify items 1 & 2 on the external dorsal (back side) surface of the worm.

B. Identify items 3, 4, & 5 on the external ventral (belly side) of surface of the worm.

C. Identify item 2 in the image of the worm’s internal morphology w/o the digestive tract.

D. Describe sexual reproduction in worms.

2. Fetal Pig

A. Use the Anatomical References guide. To what region of the body does dorsal, ventral, anterior, and posterior refer to?

B. Investigate the Nervous system. The pig is similar to the human in many ways.

Name four large regions (lobes) of the brain and indicate where they are located and what functions they have in humans.

B. Comparative Hominid Anatomy

•   Compare the the skull casts of a chimp, Australopithicus, Homo erectus, neanderthal, and modern Homo sapiens. Be sure to use the lateral view.

•   Describe features that are common and different between the cranial structure of these creatures. What patterns do you see? •   Describe the basic timeline and sequence of evolution for the creatures listed above. Be explicit.

Virtual Lab 8: Human Impact

A. Water footprints

•   Describe the water crisis. How is it impacting women and children globally? What is happening with the Ogalala (be specific)?

Water crisis refers to lack of access to safe water sources. Inadequate drinking water supply is among the world’s major causes of preventable morbidity and mortality.

Water related health burdens are borne by women and children who may forego schooling and childhood in order to transport water from distant sources. Women and children are also often responsible for the gathering of fuel wood both for cooking and for boiling the polluted water.

The High Plains stretch northward from West Texas to Wyoming and South Dakota, and in natural conditions form a dry grassland. There is less than 16 inches of rain a year near the Rockies and in West Texas, but that increases eastward to 28 inches in central Kansas. The rainfall varies a great deal from year to year, however. The steady gradient of increasing rain to the eastward, but varying yearly rainfall, means that the optimal western limit for growing crops such as corn, rather than grazing cattle, shifts each year. This problem is made worse because there is hardly any water surplus: evaporation levels are very close to precipitation levels. Apart from the constraints on farming, this fact means that there is little recharge of ground water from precipitation: ground water percolates only very slowly eastward in underground aquifers from the areas where Rocky Mountain snowmelt recharges them.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) began intensive research on the Ogallala in 1978. It found that the Ogallala had discharged perhaps 3 maf/yr into springs and rivers before development: this, then, would be a sustainable yield from the aquifer as it used to be, compared with the 1980 pumping rate of 18 maf/yr.

•   Describe what the water footprint is and how it is estimated.

The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business. Water use is measured in water volume consumed (evaporated) and/or polluted per unit of time.

A water footprint can be calculated for any well-defined group of consumers (e.g., an individual, family, village, city, province, state or nation) or producers (e.g., a public organization, private enterprise or economic sector). The water footprint is a geographically explicit indicator, not only showing volumes of water use and pollution, but also the locations. However, the water footprint does not provide information on how the embedded water negatively or positively affects local water resources, ecosystems and livelihoods.

•   Report the two or more estimates of your water footprint (and the calculator(s) that you used). Ecosystem simulator assignment.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION;

Comparative Hominid Anatomy

Introduction

The study of comparative anatomy is the study of how similar the morphology and physiology of two or more organisms is to each other. Comparative anatomy has been used to answer many questions about human evolution, such as how humans evolved from other primates and where behavioral modernity first arose.

For example, early hominids had large brains but they were still able to do things like climb trees and make stone tools. Scientists have come up with several theories about why our ancestors developed this ability but all of them agree on one thing: it was an important evolutionary step that helped us adapt better to changing environments over time.

Hominidae family

Hominidae is a family of hominids that includes the great apes and humans. Members of this family are primates that are more closely related to humans than they are to other apes. The term “hominid” refers to all species in this family, but most taxonomists use it as a general term for any member of Hominidae.

Hominini includes only one genus: Homo; Pan satyrus is sometimes included in Homo but not by all experts (e.g., Koenigswald et al., 2004; Grine et al., 2005). The other genera within Hominini include Pongo (orangutans), Gorilla gorilla/genus gorilla), Callicebus (Cebus ape) and Ateles paniscus/genus Ateles).

Australopithecus

Australopithecus is a genus of hominid that emerged in Africa about 4-4.5 million years ago. Australopithecus afarensis was the first species of Australopithecus to be identified as belonging to this family, based on its robust jaws and large braincase.

Ardipithecus

Ardipithecus ramidus is a hominin that lived in the Middle Awash region of Ethiopia. It was thought to be closely related to Homo habilis, but it has since been placed in its own genus.

The species had a bipedal gait and was likely not as efficient at walking as modern humans are today. However, it did have ape-like features including larger jaws and teeth than those seen on earlier species such as Australopithecus afarensis or Paranthropus robustus (also known as “robust man”).

Paranthropus

Paranthropus is an extinct genus of hominids that lived between 2.5 and 1.2 million years ago, during the Early Pleistocene (1 to 0.6 million years ago). The members of this genus include P. boisei and P. robustus, both of which are thought to be members of Homo erectus or another species related to it.[1]

Homo habilis

Homo habilis was the first human species to use stone tools. They also had a more primitive skeleton than modern humans, and their brain was smaller than that of a chimpanzee.

Homo habilis evolved about 2 million years ago (2 MYA), around the same time as Australopithecines like Lucy and Ardipithecus afarensis, but about 1 million years before australopith fossils were found in Africa. While these three species shared many similarities with each other—hence their name “early hominids”—their differences are significant enough to warrant separate discussion:

Homo ergaster

Homo ergaster was an early human species that lived in Africa about 1.9 million years ago. It is one of the first hominids to have a larger brain and body size than its ancestors, with a bigger skull and lower jawbone than Homo erectus (Homo habilis).

The brain size of Homo ergaster may be as large as that of modern humans but it was still smaller than later species such as Australopithecus africanus or Paranthropus robustus, which had brains up to twice as large again compared with modern humans’ average brain size today.[1]

Homo erectus

Homo erectus is an extinct species of hominid that lived from about 1.8 million to 70,000 years ago. It is the most species-rich genus in the human lineage and also one of the oldest, as it split off from Australopithecus at some time between 2 million and 1 million years ago.

Homo erectus was the first hominid to leave Africa, migrating to Asia and Europe between 1.8 million and 1.2 million years ago (though its remains have been found in Ethiopia). They were fully modern humans but are sometimes called “Peking Man” because their fossils were first discovered near Peking Man’s hometown in China (now Beijing).

Neandertals (H. neanderthalensis)

Neandertals were a species of human that lived in Europe and parts of western Asia from about 200,000 to 30,000 years ago. They are the closest extinct relatives of modern humans.

Neandertals are thought to have evolved from Homo erectus, who lived in Africa between 1.8 and 0.5 million years ago (Ma). You can learn more about Neandertal anatomy here: https://www.popular-archaeology/comparative_homo_neanderthalensis

Homo sapiens

Homo sapiens is the only extant species of its genus, Homo, and the only surviving species of the human clade. The species is estimated to have emerged from as early as about 300,000 years ago.

The earliest fossil evidence for anatomically modern humans dates from about 200,000 years ago. In 2016 it was discovered that a skull found in Dmanisi belonged to an adult male who lived between 1 million and 2 million years ago.[4]

It is often assumed that modern humans evolved in Africa and spread out into Eurasia around 60–70 thousand years ago,[5][6] but this hypothesis has been challenged by recent genetic studies.[7][8] These results suggest that anatomically modern human populations had already diversified sufficiently during this period to leave Africa before leaving Eurasia c55kyr after leaving Arabia around 100 kyr ago.[9].

Comparative Hominid Anatomy

Comparative anatomy is the study of structure and function in relation to other organisms. In this context, it refers to the comparison of specimens that have been found and studied by scientists. Comparative anatomy can be used to investigate biological diversity among species, as well as evolutionary relationships between these species.

Comparisons between hominid skeletal structures provide evidence for hominid evolution over time and serve as important tools in paleoanthropological research on human origins

Some examples include:

• Homo erectus (1-0 million years ago) – Smaller than modern humans, but larger than Australopithecus or earlier fossils. They were known for their ability to use fire; however their brains were not fully developed like ours yet so they couldn’t think abstractly like us today do! This shows how much our brains have evolved since then…

Conclusion

We have now covered a lot of the main points of Hominidae family, including: Australopithecus, Ardipithecus and Paranthropus. There are many other species that were once considered members of this genus but were later found to be too closely related genetically or morphologically to their direct ancestor such as Homo habilis, Homo ergaster and Homo erectus. Finally we covered two important evolutionary events in human evolution: the emergence of our genus Homo sapiens from its predecessor Homo erectus and Neandertals being classified as one species with modern humans called H. neanderthalensis (“Neanderthal”).