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