Unit 9 reflection

This unit was about the different types of life, their characteristics, and how they are classified. We learned about how we have a common ancestor, and how that one ancestor branches out into three domains, the Eukaryotas, Archaea, and Bacteria. We also leared about the other taxonomix levels such as kingdom, phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and the Species. We also learned about how different species are all related.

Source

We also watched a documentary called "Your Inner Fish" which showed how we are related to fish and have many similar characteristics. Both us and fish have bony skeletons, backbones, and skulls. This shows how we are related to fish because it is too much to be a coincidence. Also both use hox genes and have similar developmental process, and our embryos are practically identical. Finally we also share some similar bone patterns.



Image link

Image link
Something that I still want to learn about in this unit is about the common ancestor. It really interests me that all animals all originated from one single species. It's really odd how so much diversity could come from on point and that all of the life alive today has the same ancestor. I really want to know more about some of the transitional species, such as Tiktaalik which was the gateway species between living in water and coming onto land.

source

A big part of our unit was the "What on Earth Evolved Presentation." We made a 4-8 minute presentation on a species of our choice. I chose apples and presented on what i considered to be important about apples. I gained a lot of experience from this presentation. I realized that it was better to talk more and have less words on my bullet points in the slideshow. If there are too many words on the slideshow, then the audience gets distracted and can't focus on what the presenter is saying. This way, there is a balance between the amount of words that the audience has to read and the amount of words that the presenter says. In my upcoming TED talk, I will use the experience I gained from this presentation and improve upon it. I'm going to try to incorporate even less words into my slideshow and memorize more.