The Ecology of Bellarmine

The Ecology of Bellarmine 

    If we decided to take a trip around the school, we would be amazed with how many different species of animals and plants.  This is exactly what we did one fine morning.  There were many great things in our wonderful community, so immerse yourself in these images that I have provided you about the ecosystem of Bellarmine.

This stuff is what we call grass.  (Poaceae) It is a producer as it absorbs sunlight for food.

Apis Mellifera (Western Honeybee) These guys are herbivores.  They eat pollen from flowers.  Some bees in Hawaii are threatened and endangered so try to protect before they are all gone.

These are chickens (gallus gallus domesticus).  They are secondary consumers as they eat bugs.

This is a palm tree (Arecaceae).  They are non-native trees brought in Spain.

These are fruit flies (Drosophila).  They are decomposers, eating and breaking apart an orange.

This is trash (notbelong junko).  They are a source of pollution, so throw these guys away if you see them lying around.

At this very moment, my phone decides to run out of batteries, but I can still tell you what we saw.


Spiders (araneae) are a great example of carnivores as they eat they eat any bugs or insects trapped in their nest.  They've even been known to eat birds too, but not the ones at our school.

Lastly, we (homo sapiens) are tertiary consumers as well as omnivores.  We eat the animals that eat animals that eat the plants (unless you're vegetarian, sorry).


There's much more, but I would probably bore you to death if I listed them out, so I'll start wrapping things up.  Here are a few pointers to take away from this.

1. Ecology focuses on the study of plants and animals and they interact with one another.  Environmental science, however, focuses more generally on earth and life science.  Here at Bellarmine, animals eat plants (ecology) and we throw away trash (environmental).

2. Here, we find a variety of animals and plants, specifically at our school garden.  Chickens and plants are thriving, as well as insects, that are feeding from the plants.  These are the biotic factors.  Abiotic factors are the soil the plants live in or the house in which the chickens live.

3. In our community, flowers absorb sunlight.  Insects eat from these flowers.  Spiders eat the insects trapped in their web.  Chickens will eat spiders.  And we, humans, eat chickens.  This is a food chain in which energy is passed down from one entity to another.  However, only 10% of the energy is passed on to the next, which explains why we would eat more than a bug would.

4.  The bees are endangered and threatened due to pesticides, which are harming these bees. and mutating the eggs, so that they will die.  Palm tree seeds were shipped to America from Spain and were planted, making them invasive species.

5.  Pollution doesn't just come from trash, which chokes animals if they eat it, but air pollution affects the quality of air, making it bad to breathe in.  There is also water pollution in which we pollute the water, making it unsafe to drink.

Thanks for reading!

Fish in a Bowl in Water in Ice with Science

Fish in a Bowl in Water in Ice with Science

The snack that smiles back can really be useful when it comes to studying respiration.  Not really, but we did use actual goldfish to help us study the rate at which they breath at certain temperatures.  The first and probably most important step was to actually get the goldfish.  If you have already seen my previous post, you can see that I brought quite a few.  I still have them right now.

Anyways, we placed a goldfish into room temperature water and counted how often it took a breath in a minute.  We also did this with slightly warmer water and slightly colder water.  We repeated this on other fish to verify our data.  Beforehand, we predicted that the fish would breathe less in colder water.  Here are our results:

This graph and our data indicates that as we lowered the temperature of the water, the fish began to breathe less often.  So we were right with our hypothesis.  Other than just temperature, however, the fish may been affected by the size of the container or how panicked the fish were.  The average shows how a normal fish would breathe at certain temperatures.  A similar test that could have the same affects would be testing to see the rate at which the fish breathe when placed under a lamp and without one.  I believe that fish breathe less in cold water, because they are trying to store energy in such a cold environment, and they do that by breathing less.

Yes, I brought in goldfish on 5/5/2017!

I Like Fish! Do You?

March For Science

March for Science

April 22, 2017, marks yet another Earth Day in the years.  However, this time, I was doing something different.  We were paying a visit to March for Science, a special festival that takes place on Earth Day to commemorate the wonders of science.  There were signs everywhere, reminding people that science matters to our world.  A huge mass of people listened to well-known speakers talk about their intellect and opinions on knowledge.  People were encouraging one another to believe that science is real.  They say that science is not fake and global warming is a real threat that is facing the earth.  We are told to protect our environment.  This is what we, as humans, are encouraged to do to save our planet.  If you have time, plant a tree or some flowers. Stop using up resources.  We all should have a common goal: we must save our common home.  Alert the ignorant, so that we can all make a change.  Happy Earth Day!

Decoding Jelly Beans

Decoding Jelly Beans

A Lamp Lights Lilacs That Sip Sap

#wongjellybean

Jelly Beans, Yum!

#wongjellybean

Meiosis Stop Motion Video

Meiosis Stop Motion Video

For one of our Biology assignments we were told to create a stop motion video depicting meiosis.  To keep things creative, we used belts as the inner and outer membrane.  The chromosomes were the beads from a jump rope.  Due to our lack of experience in video editing, our video was difficult to create, but we managed to complete it.  You can find a link to the video here.

The function of meiosis is to allow a cell split into 4 more.  They crossover their chromosomes and split.  Genetic variation can occur through meiosis in the crossing over and rearrangement of chromosomes as well as possibly a mutation.  Non-disjunction can be caused when homologous chromosomes fail to separate which can lead to syndromes.  Pandas have probably been a close relative of bears, but somewhere within the evolution lines, non-disjunction may have occurred.  Instead of having all the chromosomes received, they may have failed to separate due to non-disjunction, which may have led to only half of those chromosomes.  From this project, I have learned the multiple stages of meiosis.  But more importantly, I have learned that science can be quite fun to recreate using everyday items.