School Project

[nino]

Sorry, I've also posted this in the marine section but am hoping for a better turnout of answers if I post in both. If need be, please go ahead and delete one.
I'm doing a school project for my education course that is designing a curriculum for a 2nd grade class by California standards. My group's theme is Ocean Week/Month. I don't know a whole lot about marine life (even though I'm a bio major ) so was hoping some of you could possibly help me come up with a couple of ideas.

Some things I need to know are:
1.What is a sea animal (fish, mammal, invertebrate) that shows variation among its population? It needs to be obvious to a viewer since this is for 2nd graders
2.Are there any seaplants that produce fruits or flowers?
3.Are their certain environments in the ocean that affect the inherited characteristics of offspring?
4.Is there an animal that has several stages in its life cycle? A non-marine example would be a butterfly or frog.

Thank you in advance, it will help me a lot.

 

[Ethos]

Huh, I'm really new at SW, and I just started my nano, but a polyp that opens and closes would be a good one, although lots of work..

 

[Dorkhedeos]

octopus? coelacanth?

 

[nino]

Huh, I'm really new at SW, and I just started my nano, but a polyp that opens and closes would be a good one, although lots of work..

octopus? coelacanth?

Which questions do these apply to?

 

[Dorkhedeos]

well, octopus can all do different things, some can open cans, some cant. not sure about coelacanths though, i thought it would be interesting because they are ancient fish

 

[Synirr]

I'm not sure if this applies to any of the specific things you're asking for, but the mimic octopus would be interesting to talk about. It impersonates a lot of different sea life as a way of avoiding predators. Check out these videos to see what I mean, they've very cool. I've seen videos of them curled into perfect balls and walking across the sea floor on two legs to resemble a coconut rolling around

All environments everywhere effect inherited characteristics (and thus evolution) of the organisms in them, but some good examples of this taken to an extreme would be the leafy sea dragon, whose body is meant to look like the seaweed in which it hides, and the rock fish, which looks like... well... a rock.

Pretty much all marine crustaceans, such as crabs and shrimp, begin life with a larval stage. Even the cute little land hermit crabs we see in pet stores are born as zooplankton in the ocean

Another neat thing you could talk about would be symbiotic relationships among marine animals, like between pistol shrimp and some species of goby. The shrimp digs and maintains a burrow that the two of them live in and remains in constant contact with the goby because its eyesight is very poor. The goby keeps watch for predators, and the two will even share food amongst themselves. There are also cleaning stations on reefs where fish will come to have parasites and such picked off of them by other fish. Large fish may even let these smaller cleaner fish swim in and out of their mouths freely, picking parasites from the gills!

 

[Mr Miagi]

1.What is a sea animal (fish, mammal, invertebrate) that shows variation among its population? It needs to be obvious to a viewer since this is for 2nd graders

Now thats a tough one. Sorry, but i have no real idea on a specific example.

2.Are there any seaplants that produce fruits or flowers?

Some species of Mangroves produce flowers (Rhizphora sp.). They are also a very interesting, diverse and important habitat.

3.Are their certain environments in the ocean that affect the inherited characteristics of offspring?

There are many examples. Id say, again, an octopus is a great example. Their family is broad, and covers most oceans, however large varience can be seen in different octopus from different geographical locations. Hope that helps. As Synirr said, a Leafy Sea Dragon mimcs macro algae in order to escape predation. Deap Sea Thermal Vents exhibit a tremendous amount of strange life. Including non-photosythetic corals chemo-synthetic (forgoitten proper term.... lol...oops) life.

4.Is there an animal that has several stages in its life cycle? A non-marine example would be a butterfly or frog.

Shrimps go through a variety of different planktonic and larval stages throughout their life cycle. They are an "interesting' subject. And one such shrimp even starred in Finding Nemo!

 

[Synirr]

1.What is a sea animal (fish, mammal, invertebrate) that shows variation among its population? It needs to be obvious to a viewer since this is for 2nd graders

Do cuttlefish count? Those change colour at will, but that's variation I guess... Does it have to be just one species? If not, you could just talk about how many different varieties of crab or nudibranchs there are. If we're talking just one species, then some species of mantis shrimp have an incredible degree of variability when it comes to their colours. Check out some of the other species on that site for more examples

 

[nino]

Wow, you guys have great ideas! I just have to keep it simple for little kids. I hate dumbed down biology though. I remember taking bio in high school and then later taking AP bio, what a difference in material! My teacher even admitted that the regular bio class was all lies and made so we could understand it! Anyways, Thursday is my afternoon off (no work, no lab) so I will be doing lots of research then.

Synirr, I don't think cuttlefish count for variation in a population, it's an interesting adaption I might be able to throw in somewhere (I have tons more topics, the ones I posted were the ones I needed ideas for). I think mantis shrimp sound good as an example of variation. I kept thinking of marine fish which from all my snorkeling trips and I did not recall them having great variation among the same ones. I guess our selective breeding hasn't gotten to them yet because with something like bettas or livebearers I can think of tons of colors. But that's not a natural population.

Mr. Miagi, I totally forgot about mangroves! With ocean vegetation I kept thinking of kelp... we have lots of it here that washes up on the beaches. How silly of me

 

[Nickoli]

Some things I need to know are:
1.What is a sea animal (fish, mammal, invertebrate) that shows variation among its population? It needs to be obvious to a viewer since this is for 2nd graders

Do you mean population of an individual species, or on a more generic scale, like squid and size of different species? Or more like how Orca's seem to have 2-3 subspecies?

2.Are there any seaplants that produce fruits or flowers?

Don't know.

3.Are their certain environments in the ocean that affect the inherited characteristics of offspring?

Yes, perhaps the best illustrations to my knowledge are volcanic vents at extreme temps, and the cold hemoglobinless antarctic icefishes with antifreeze proteins and peptides in their blood that live at below freezing temps.

4.Is there an animal that has several stages in its life cycle? A non-marine example would be a butterfly or frog.

Take a look at Starfish. They look really neat when young.

 

[timmystood]

I'm no expert but these would be my answers and guesses to the questions.

1. Fish
2. Flowers
3. Yeah - things like being near the ocean floor
4. Wouldn't know - a starfish!