From The Classroom To The Real World

 Hello everyone, Today I decided to think about the difference between Gymnosperms and Angiosperms. While Gymnosperms do have four phylum and Angiosperms one, Phylum Anthophyta/ Flowering plants compose around 250,000 known species while Gymnosperms altogether equate to around 806 known species. The major difference between Gymnosperms and Angiosperms is that one has seeds not enclosed in chambers while the other has its seeds develop inside chambers (within flowers). With the numbers above and the inclusion of nonvascular and seedless plants, we can approximate that nearly 90% of living plant species are angiosperms. Now let's talk about the life cycle of all plants. Plants go through a process called alternation of generations between gametophytes and sporophytes. While this does not occur in charophytes (there is always an exception to the rule in biology) this type of reproductive cycle came from green algae. Basically, the process goes as such: The gametophyte produces haplo...

To those interested in The Evolution of Plants and how they came to be, the following post is dedicated to you. First, let us briefly characterize the main groups of the plant kingdom. Focusing on extant lineages we can see the kingdom is divided into two main groups. Those groups being Nonvascular Plants (Bryophytes: Liverworts, Mosses, and Hornworts) and Vascular Plants (Seedless and With seed including Gymnosperms and Angiosperms. ). They are called vascular due to cells joined into tubes that transport nutrients and water throughout the body. The Ten Phyla of Extant Plants approximates the number of known plant species to be around 300,000. To see pictures of Bryophytes and Gymnosperms you can go back to my  Hortus post . How did plants come to be? In Figure 29.6 it is seen that all Plants came from a common Ancestor of Green Alga, a group composed of many unicellular species and small colonial species. With the appearance of spores, early plants arose approximately 470 million...

 Dear readers, Today has finally come. In a group of three, I went to the Botanical Gardens. From Fungi, Moss, and Cyanobacteria to 15 meter-high tree ferns I learned about major evolutionary trends in plant life and how the expansion of specific plant phylum led to the Ice Ages occurring 400 million years ago to now. Fungi, Moss (Bryophyte), and cyanobacteria Zosterophyllum, Rhynia, Cooksonia, Psilotum/ Whisk Fern Encephalartos altensteinii or Eastern Cape Giant Cycad Until next time, Sol

 Dear Readers, From Darwin's theory of natural selection to Lamarckian inheritance, evolutional theories have been created since the time of Greek philosophers. While the history of how evolution came to be so accepted is important this post will focus on the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that supports it, specifically Homology and Convergent Evolution. Homology, in simple terms, describes the similarities among different organisms. Per a book called Biology a Global Approach, as descendants of a specific ancestral organism face different environmental conditions they can have characteristics that are similar, yet function in very different ways. This similarity is known as homology when it comes from a common ancestor. While not visible to the naked eye, genetic code is a homologous characteristic shared by all species from its LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). In the coming days, I will be focusing more on homologous characteristics that evolved recently and are...

Dear my fellow readers, My name is Sol Chambliss and I'm a student at Amsterdam University College. Over the past several months I have been studying several theoretical concepts in my Introduction to Biology course. Going from learning about major trends in the evolution of the life cycle (plants) to describing major outlines of the Animal Kingdom, we then were told to relate it to the real world. In the end what use is it to learn something that cannot be translated to reality? Due to this idea, our instructor decided to have us do two excursions. While it was very different from past circumstances because of a global pandemic, both the Hortus Botanicus (Botanical Gardens) and Artis (Zoo) aided in illustrating many theoretical concepts such as homology, convergent evolution, and the reasons for vestigial organs within their respective areas.  Hopefully through these blogs you can learn just as much as I did from the comfort of your own home, without risking the spread of the coro...