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email: [Link]bedwards@rahway.net
Because of telephone availability in the school, the most effective and preferred means to contact me is via email. I am able to check email far more frequently and can respond immediately. If you would like to meet with me, contact the Guidance Department at (732) 396-1029 and request your student's counselor.
Current Unit (as of April 12, 2010)
 FOSS Populations and Ecosystems
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The final unit that we will be completing is Populations and Ecosystems (Ecology). In this unit, we will be studying the interactions of things in the environment. Once again, it is important for students to have a friend in class who can share work when absences occur. This unit also provides supplemental activities as well as activities we do in class online.
Students should be able to talk in detail about all the things found in the "Big Ideas" Section of this page.
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 What are the 9 characteristics of living things?
made of cells, move, grow, respirate, ingest, digest & excrete, can reproduce at some point in their lives, adapt to their environment, respond to stimuli
What are the needs of living things?
shelter, water, food/nutrition, air, room/space to roam, mate or resources to reproduce. All these things will be found in the living thing's HABITAT.
Asexual reproduction - no mating necessary
Sexual reproduction - mating necessary
Organism - any living thing
Individual - one single organism
Population - all of the individuals of one kind in a particular area
Community - all of the interacting populations in a particular area
Ecosystem - a system of interacting organisms and nonliving factors in a specified area
Biotic - living organisms and the products of organisms
Abiotic - nonliving (never was a part of something living.)
Jane Goodall studied chimpanzees in Africa beginning at age 26 in the year 1960.
She studied 3 generations of the same family of chimpanzees.
All true bugs have 3 body segments(head, abdomen, and thorax), 2 antennae, 6 legs, and a proboscis(a strawlike mouth used for sucking up food and water)
Habitats not only have biotic (living or came from a living thing) materials, but also abiotic (nonliving and did not come from a living thing) factors. This includes, but is not limited to things such as rocks, minerals, water, air, temperature, and pollution.
Producers (aka autotrophs) - able to make their own food, usually through photosynthesis. (Photosynthesis - the process by which plants use sunlight and convert it into food.)
Consumers (aka heterotrophs) - must take in food energy by eating other organisms. There are special categories of consumers.
Herbivore - a consumer that only eats plants. (aka a primary consumer)
Carnivore - a consumer that only eats meat.
Omnivore - a consumer that eats plants and meat.
Scavenger - a consumer that eats the bodies of dead animals
Decomposer - an organism that breaks down dead organisms into simpler substances (in other words, decomposers cause things to rot away to nothing.)
Food Chain - a sequence of organisms that eat one another in an ecosystem.
Food Web - the overlapping food webs in an ecosystem.
Things to remember about food webs:
1. A food web must have a producer and a decomposer.
2. Arrows on a food chain or food web should point to the predator (thing that eats) and not to the prey (thing that is eaten.)
Trophic: food
Rule of 10%: says that only about 10% of the biomass/energy at one trophic (food) level of an ecosystem is available to the organisms at the next trophic level.
Food Pyramid: a diagram of the trophic levels in an ecosystem.
Reproductive Potential: how fast a population could grow if there was nothing to control it.
Limiting Factors: things (can be biotic or abiotic) in an ecosystem that control population size.
Evolution: a change over a period of time.
Natural Selection: the idea that the organisms with the most favorable characteristics to survive and environment will survive, be able to reproduce, and pass those characteristics on to future generations.
Adaptation: a characteristic or behavior that allows and organism to survive in its environment. If the adaptation is a physical characteristic, it is called a structural adaptation. If the adaptation is an action or behavior, it is called a behavioral adaptation.
Protective Coloration: a special structural adaptation where an organism's physical appearance allows it to hide/camouflage itself from predators in its environment.
Genetics: the study of how characteristics are passed from generation to generation.
Feature: a structure, characteristic, or behavior of an organism.
Trait: a specific feature.
Variation: different expressions of a trait in a population.
DNA: organism’s genetic information.
Chromosome: tightly wound DNA. Humans have 46, 23 from mom, 23 from dad.
Allele: place on a chromosome that holds the code for a specific trait.
Gene: when two chromosomes pair up, the two alleles for a trait make up a gene.
Genotype: the blueprint for an organism
Phenotype: the physical expression of genes.
Punnett Square: a tool used by geneticists to predict genetic outcomes.
Dominant Allele: an allele that has more influence in the expression of a trait.
Recessive Allele: an allele that has less influence in the expression of a trait and is hidden by the dominant trait. There must be no dominant alleles present for a recessive trait to appear.
Homozygous: having two identical alleles for a trait. For example, two dominant alleles or two recessive alleles for a trait.
Heterozygous: having two different alleles for a trait. For example, one dominant allele and one recessive allele for a trait.
(more to come).
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 Find activities and some of the computer simulations we do in class at www.fossweb.com/popecoweb
Mini-Project Due May 7th: Each student was assigned an animal. Students are to find the KINGDOM, PHYLUM, CLASS, ORDER, FAMILY, GENUS, & SPECIES NAMES for that animal. That information, along with pictures of the animal should be placed on a creative poster. Poster paper was provided to each student.
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 Did you know that...
If unwound and tied together, strands of DNA from a human would be longer than five feet long but only 50 trillionths of an inch in width.
If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat it measures 87 feet long.
The most dangerous animal in the world is the common housefly. Because of their habit of visiting animal waste, they transmit more diseases than any other animal.
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 Check in the future.
RMS BASEBALL 2010 SCHEDULE
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