A Chil Flamingo

In this first unit of our new class Population, we focused on creating an art piece of an organism of choice. Our class visited Lincoln Park Zoo to view our organisms. I really enjoyed seeing multiple Chilean flamingos together; I was able to see how they communicated and expressed themselves as well as their physical traits. I gathered photos of the flamingos to examine and view their morphological characteristics that put them in their taxonomic levels. I also created an art piece of the Chilean flamingo to show of where these taxonomic traits are on the flamingos. I really enjoyed this first unit, especially when we learned about set theory and how that correlates to the organisms being placed in categories. I hope you enjoy learning about his interesting first unit.

Taxonomy
First, I created a table to specify the taxonomy of a Phoenicopteriformes chilensis (Chilean flamingo). You will notice that the Genus and species have the same taxonomic description because a Chilean flamingo is the only animal within its genus.

Taxonomic classifications	Taxonomic level	Taxonomic description
Kingdom	Animalia	Sexual reproduction, eukaryotic, multi-cellular.
Phylum	Chordata	Has a spinal cord.
Class	Aves	Toothless beaked birds, hard laid eggs, feathers
Order	Phoenicopteriformes	Long legged, stout bills
Family	Phoenicopteridae	Dipped bill, water wading capabilities
Genus	Phoenicopterus	A specific dipped shape to their bill
Species	Phoenicopteriformes chilinsis	Originating from Chile, can reproduce offspring that is also capable of having offspring

Taxonomy Art Piece
The next step was to create an art piece that would show where the  specific taxonomy traits were being shown off. I decided to draw a Chilean flamingo. The taxonomy traits and where they are located are shown off in the image below.

" C- Flamingo taxonomy traits" IF 2017

Venn diagram Comparisons 
Next I created a Venn-diagram to show off the likeness and differences between the animal that I chose versus animals that my classmates chose. One of my classmates chose to do research on a Fennec Fox, while another did research on polar bears. Feel free to view their blogs afterwards. While creating this Venn-diagram I found that its pretty difficult to find similarities between Chilean Flamingos and Polar bears and Fennec Foxes, mainly because two are mammals while the other is a type of bird. This is good information, we want to truly show off how unique these animals are.

"Flamingo comparison Venn diagram" IF 2017

Set Theory 
Then, I created a set of set theory statements that describe the relations between Chilean flamingos and the bird's taxonomic traits.

F(traits of flamingos)= {can fly, bill, two legs, lives in flocks, pink}      
B(traits of birds)= {wings, teeth-less, hard eggs, endothermic, feathers}

1. F∩B = {feathers, hard eggs, wings, endothermic, teeth-less}
2. {feathers, hard eggs, teeth-less} ∈ F
3. {beak, herbivore, lives singular, green, mammal} ⊂' F
4. F⊂B
5. F∪B = {feathers, wings, teeth-less, endothermic, hard eggs, two legs, pink, lives in flocks, bill, can fly}

Photography

I also managed to snap a photo of a Chilean Flamingo at Lincoln Park Zoo. I used this photo a reference for my art piece. I gathered some interesting information about how Chilean flamingos live and interact. I found that Chilean flamingos are pink because of a natural pink dye called canthaxantin is in their diet of shrimp and blue-green algae. Wild Chilean flamingos also live in massive groups where they feast on shrimp. Flamingos are essentially defenseless against other larger creatures, so they live in very larger groups:400 flamingos are way more intimidating than 20.

"Chilean Flamingo" IF 2017

AP conclusive
Overall this unit was very enjoyable, I thought going to Lincoln park zoo was a pretty necessary FE for me and the class. There wasn't anything in this unit that I didn't like, The workload felt perfect an the unit went at the perfect pace for me. We got a lot of time to work on this action project, and a lot of time to complete our work and get a good grasp of the content in the class. I'm happy with how my action project turned out. I was able to take some great picture of Chilean flamingos and learn some new information about them. I didn't really struggle with this action project too much because I was able to understand the topic and concepts pretty efficiently. Thanks for viewing this blog and feel free to check out my classmates research on animals.

Citations:

BirdLife International. 2016. Phoenicopterus chilensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016: e.T22697365A93610811. http://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2016-3.RLTS.T22697365A93610811.en. Downloaded on 24 September 2017.

“Phoenicopterus chilensis .” Phoenicopterus chilensis (Chilean Flamingo), www.iucnredlist.org/details/22697365/0. Accessed 24 Sept.2017.