A great example of this is the Al Shouf Cedar Nature Reserve, the largest nature reserve in Lebanon. This nature reserve is considered a location used for the conservation of large mammals such as wolves and caracal lynx. This reserve is also believed to be adapted for the reintroduction of extinct species such as the mountain gazelle. In the Al-Shouf Cedar nature reserve, there is currently 25% of the remaining cedar forests in Lebanon, 32 species of mammals that reside there as well as the presence of ancient ruins. There was severe land degradation due to wood harvesting and goat/sheep herding, but in the 1960s reforestation began.

The Maya peoples would boil plants that would then be used as an herbal drink or bath, eaten raw, as well as smoked or snorted. Some of the plants that were chosen for medicinal use were; chili peppers, cacao, tobacco, agave, and the pitarilla tree. I also read that they would use yellow plants to treat illnesses of the liver and spleen since yellow was the color of pus and bile, and white plants symbolized death since most white plants were poisonous, so they were avoided all together.

There are so many wildlife species that are currently being wiped out by disease. One that comes to mind is white nose syndrome in bats, which has already killed off 5.7 million bats in just the eastern half of North America alone. Humans play a huge role in the spread of this disease. They can spread the particular fungus that causes white nose syndrome by carrying the fungus unknowingly on their shoes and clothing, so it's super important for hikers to clean their gear before and after entering caves.

I decided to look more into how urbanization has effected butterfly populations and came across an interesting paper on how multiple butterfly species were effected by increased human population density and built-up area in Northern Europe. The authors found that increasing human population density had more of a negative impact on these butterfly species than the built-up area.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11252-020-01055-6

Sanger sequencing determines the nucleotide sequence of DNA. The target DNA is copied multiple times which makes different sized fragments. Fluorescent "chain terminator" nucleotides are markers for the end of these fragments which then allows the sequence to be found.

A great example of an amphibian species that has been negatively impacted by habitat destruction due to urbanization is the Northern Dusky Salamander in New York City. This species of salamander used to be very common in New York City, but in recent decades, populations have declined, with a majority of them presenting genetic bottlenecks.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3642699/

I'm familiar with morphine and codeine, but have never heard of these three alkaloids before.

I've never heard this term before and wanted to look more into it. After some research, I found out that bioactive metabolites contain microbes that are thought to be sources of antioxidants, vitamins, antibiotics, and enzymes.

I definitely think that the change in land use played a huge role in the extinction of large mammals in Madagascar thousands of years ago. There was an abrupt land use change from a forest-dominated ecosystem to a grassland-dominated ecosystem. There was also an increase in charcoal from fires as well as an increase in a fungus that is linked to manure of herbivores such as cows. In conclusion, I think that when humans moved from a hunting/foraging lifestyle to farming, this caused the human population to drastically increase and large mammal species to decrease and eventually go extinct.

Before reading this paper, I've never heard of this before. After some reasearch, I found out that fragipan soil is altered subsurface soil layers restricting water flow as well as the penetration of roots. In the United states, only 28 sates have fragipans. They're common in the southern valley of the Mississippi River and central and southern Appalachian Mountains.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0341816212002512#f0005

In 2020, it was stated that in the Western United States since 1970, the wildfire season increased to 3 days per year. It is believed that this increase is a result of rising temperatures which dry out vegetation causing them to catch on fire more easily, and early snow melt.

https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/us-fires-climate-emissions#:~:text=The%20western%20U.S.%20wildfire%20season,melting%20earlier%20in%20the%20season.&text=Burned%20area%20has%20increased%20across,and%202020%20is%20particularly%20bad.

A run-away greenhouse effect happens due to more energy from the sun being absorbed by a planet than it is able to radiate back into space. Ultimately meaning, the hotter the surface temperature, the quicker it is able to warm up. A great example of this is the surface of Venus and how the surface of this planet is now hot enough to melt lead. This is due to high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that trapped heat that triggered a global SGE which caused the oceans to boil away. I should also mention that all of this occurred billion of years ago.

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2534/scientists-assess-potential-for-super-greenhouse-effect-in-earths-tropics/#:~:text=A%20few%20billion%20years%20ago,hot%20enough%20to%20melt%20lead.

This reminds of me 'kleptoparasitism' seen in animals. Kleptoparasitism in the animal world is when a species steals food from another species. A great example of an animal that is kleptoparasitic is the hyena. Hyenas are known to be great scavengers and often steal the food of other species such as lions.

Sieve tube members don't have a nucleus or ribosomes and need companion cells to help them function as transport molecules. Companion cells are able to provide the sieve tube members with all of the proteins that are necessary in order to signal/carry energy (ATP) which helps them transfer molecules to different areas of the plant.

I found it so interesting that the authors were able to discover new information on these angiosperm species through relative abundance scores! With this new information I definitely think it will lead to new flowering plant discoveries!

This paper goes more in depth about the genus Sibbaldia so I decided to research more on a few other genus's that were mentioned that originated in the QTP and adjacent regions. Genus kellogia is a part of the flowering plant group and in the family Rubiaceae. Genus pistacia is also part of the flowering plant group, specifically, it is part of the family Anacardiaceae (cashew family). Genus pistacia are small 5-15cm tall shrubs/trees that contain 10-20 species native to Africa, southern Europe, and warm semidesert parts of North America including Texas and California.

https://plants.usda.gov/java/ClassificationServlet?source=display&classid=PISTA

One great example of this is the Northern Snakehead that is a predatory fish native to Asia but was introduced to the United States. Scientists aren't sure how the Northern Snakehead ended up in U.S waters, but it is suspected that they were dumped by aquariums "accidentally" or dumped on purpose by fish markets. Juvenile Northern Snakeheads eat a lot of the food that native fish rely on to survive and when they become adults, most of their diet consists of other fish species, which could potentially remove native fish populations.

https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/45470.html

I've never heard of this species before and decided to research it! Carex bigelowii is a high-altitude species and can be found across New England. It is a perennial herb that grows less than 50 cm tall.

One wildlife group that has been highly affected by overexploitation are fish and other aquatic species. There has been an increasing demand for seafood all over the world and this is causing more and more fish being taken from bodies of water which is negatively affecting these species. For example, cod and tuna populations have drastically declined due to overfishing. Another group impacted by overexploitation are reptiles. Reptiles are a huge player in the pet trade and are wanted for their; skin, eggs, meat, shells, etc. An example of a reptile that is one of the most popular in the pet trade is the box turtle. Box turtles are being captured in the United States and are then traded overseas.

It is so crazy to think how much the landscape around you drastically changes. I never really think about how much the landscape in my hometown has changed unless I look at side by side pictures of it; one from 10-20 years ago and one from the present. Most of this change is due to removal of certain features in the landscape as well as new additions to the area. A great example of landscape change over a period of time is in urban areas where the land starts out bare after building housing developments and then 10-15 years later, the trees that were planted in the area grow and take over and densely populate the landscape, making the housing developments less noticeable due to the area being less open.

Lycospids are the oldest group of vascular plants. The only living lycospids we have are; club mosses, spike mosses, and quillworts.

One animal species highly impacted by habitat loss is the Loggerhead sea turtle. Half of the worlds 7.5 billion human population live on the coast, which leads to this species of sea turtle looking for a new home where they can safely reproduce that isn't completely destroyed by humans. If you're interested in learning more about plant and animal species that have been negatively impacted by habitat loss, I have attached a link.

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/species.html

From what I remember when taking Bio 1, xylem stores and transports water and nutrients while phloem transports proteins as well as sugars.

This is super interesting, I've never heard of this before since I'm more familiar with animals rather than plants. From what I found, the organisms that present a haplodiplontic life cycle are fungi and green algae such as; Volvox, Spirogyra, and Chlamydomonas.

I never heard of this term before. I didn't know that there were two different types of plant parasites which are; hemiparasitic, plants that photosynthesize, and holoparasitic which are plants that don't use photosynthesis. Besides mistletoe, a few other plants that fall under the hemiparasitic category are; Indian sandalwood, Velvetbells, Rattle plants, and Indian paintbrush. I find parasitic plants very interesting and hopefully we will cover more of them during the semester! A great resource I used to find some more information on parasitic plants is: https://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/disandpath/parasiticplants/intro/Pages/ParasiticPlants.aspx

I am very familiar with photoreceptors and how they regulate circadian rhythms in animals, particularly horseshoe crabs after taking Animal Behavior with Dr. Chabot last semester! It's interesting to learn the role of photoreceptors in plants and how similar it is to what photoreceptors do in animals.

This was super interesting to learn! I guess I never knew most of the role that light plays in the life cycle of a plant besides being a source of energy.

It is very upsetting that the biodiversity that we once had will never be restored to what it once was. Fortunately, It isn't impossible to recover, however, it will never be the same. I think one of the biggest solutions to biodiversity loss is educating society on biodiversity and how our biodiversity is drastically decreasing and the ways that they can help our planet recover some of this loss. Circling back to our discussion last week, I definitely think that we need to educate adults on this matter who may not have much information on it or simply don't believe in it before we can bring this to the attention of our youth. If this is brought to more people's attention, there could still be a chance for the planet's biodiversity to recover in some form.

I was very interested in looking more into this and found a great scientific article discussing the neotropical skipper butterfly and provides details on the 10 species and how this was revealed through a process called DNA barcoding, which is where scientists take a short section of DNA and use that to gather information on a species. The article also discusses how these 10 different species have different physical traits as caterpillars, as well as different preferences in food and ecosystems, (Hebert et. al, 2004).

Hebert PD, Penton EH, Burns JM, Janzen DH, Hallwachs W. Ten species in one: DNA barcoding reveals cryptic species in the neotropical skipper butterfly Astraptes fulgerator. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Oct 12;101(41):14812-7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0406166101. Epub 2004 Oct 1. PMID: 15465915; PMCID: PMC522015. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15465915/

I had no idea that all of these environmental acts were created and put into place during the 1970's and one after the other in such a short time frame. It seems that during this time in history conservation was becoming a huge concern and realized that environmental protection was strongly needed, especially with the dramatic increase in air and water pollution.

I am really glad that conservation is now a huge part of biology considering the rapid decline of our biological systems we are experiencing today. In my opinion, I feel that we need to educate society more (starting in elementary school) on what climate change is and how it is effecting vital ecosystems and the species that live there so that future generations can get involved.