Description:

1. Description: Goals: • Examine how interactions between a species and its environment define a species niche. • Explain how a species adapts to its niche. Use student diversity and career choices as an analogy to the importance of species’ niches being fulfilled through biodiversity.

2. Objectives: Day 9 Relate social diversity to that of ecological diversity. Invent analogies of human careers and niches that various species fulfill.

3. Warm Up – “When I Grow Up” Q = If you could have any job/career, what would it be? (Consider up to 3) A = [answers will vary]

4. “What’s the Point” What is the purpose or role that your career(s) have in our society? • Think about: • What services it offers the population • How it helps, supports, or advances our culture / technology • Why did you chose your career? • Consider things such as abilities and skills needed, interests and/or background.

5. Finding your place • Raise your hand to share your career choice and its purpose. • As a class, we’ll classify each career into its industry. It may be helpful to add a list and brief description of the different industries to your “What’s the Point” column

6. “Consider the following…” Working with your neighbor list the following: • What industries / careers were not chosen? • What purpose does each one serve? • Why didn’t you chose one of these careers? • Consider things such as abilities and skills needed. • Interest or background needed.

7. “Would we Survive” Continue working with your neighbor Considering the careers we didn’t choose: • Would we survive without them and what parts of society would be most affected without it? • Why are these important to the structure of our society?

9. “Niche Analogies” • What human careers would be affect by the organisms in the video? • Of the many careers we’ve analyzed, what would be their analogues in an ecosystem? • Consider trophic level roles, symbiotic types, and abilities of different kingdoms • e.g. decomposers = waste managements

10. Tomorrow’s Lab. Tomorrow we will be inspecting our corn plants for development. This lab will be mostly observation based with some basic questions about genetics and determining ratios of traits being passed.

11. Objectives: Day 9 Relate social diversity to that of ecological diversity. Invent analogies of human careers and niches that various species fulfill.

12. Extending our Understanding: Are some people more fit for specific jobs than others? Explain. Are some organisms fit for some specific tasks than others? Explain.

13. Genetics • Some diseases are more common in certain ethnic backgrounds. For example: • Canavan Disease — This condition is most common in people of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, with a carrier incidence of 1 in 40. • Fragile X Syndrome — The Fragile X syndrome is not specific to a certain ethnic background but is more sever in males. • Sickle Cell Disease — This condition is most common in persons of African-American, African, Mediterranean, Hispanic and South American ancestry, with the carrier risk ranging from 1/10 to 1/40, depending on your ethnic background. • Tay Sachs Disease — People of both Ashkenazi Jewish and French Canadian ancestry have the greatest chance of being carriers of Tay Sachs disease, about 1/30 versus 1/250 in the general population. • Thalassemia — Individuals of Mediterranean, Southeast Asian and African ancestry have the greatest chance — 1 in 3 and 1 in 30, respectively — of being carriers for thalassemia.

14. Genetics – think about it… How do genes get passed from on person to offspring? Why do you think some ethnicities have specific diseases not found or rarely found in others? Is there a possible way of decreasing risk of passing/obtaining genetic diseases?

15. Objectives: Day 9 Relate social diversity to that of ecological diversity. Invent analogies of human careers and niches that various species fulfill.