The Great Sunflower Project

Sunflowers are great for talking about genetic change. All of the commercial sunflowers including the Giant sunflowers are descended form the plant we are using for this study. You can also use the data to examine how biodiversity of bees is different in different habitats (cities, suburbs, rural,...) as data accumulates.

Life Sciences Standard
Ecology

Stability in an ecosystem is a balance between competing effects. As a basis for understanding this concept:
Students know bio diversity is the sum total of different kinds of organisms and is affected by alterations of habitats.
Students know how to analyze changes in an ecosystem resulting from changes in climate, human activity, introduction of nonnative species, or changes in population size.
Students know how fluctuations in population size in an ecosystem are determined by the relative rates of birth, immigration, emigration, and death.
Students know how water, carbon, and nitrogen cycle between abiotic resources and organic matter in the ecosystem and how oxygen cycles through photosynthesis and respiration.
Students know a vital part of an ecosystem is the stability of its producers and decomposers.
Students know at each link in a food web some energy is stored in newly made structures but much energy is dissipated into the environment as heat. This dissipation may be represented in an energy pyramid.
* Students know how to distinguish between the accommodation of an individual organism to its environment and the gradual adaptation of a lineage of organisms through genetic change.