People tend to think that plants don’t do much from day to day – certainly when I asked my first-year students at the start of the course, they were far more interested in animals than in plants. Poor plants! But then, to the casual eye I guess they’re fairly static creatures 🙂 However, it turns […]
Continue readingMy interest in kākāpō way back in my honours year at uni: a guest speaker told us that as far as anybody knew, the last remaining birds were a few males, somewhere in Fiordland. I remember feeling that that sounded really sad – those lonely males booming for females who never came. Shortly after that, […]
Continue readingImage source: By T. Michael Keesey – Zanclean skullUploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8541387 The hominid known as “Ardi” (a specimen of Ardipithecus ramidus) was discovered in 1994, at a site near Ethiopia’s Awash River. Once excavated, it turned out that this was – for its age – a remarkably complete specimen: 125 fossilised bones, comprising […]
Continue readingBy the end of the school year, year 13 students preparing for Schol Bio should have a pretty good grasp of the concepts & content they’ve encountered in their studies. What tends to throw some, though, is the fact that the context used for each question will almost certainly be something that they haven’t come across […]
Continue readingOne of the things I do at Schol Bio workshops is work with students to identify the key themes that run through the exam questions from year to year. On the macro scale, there are three: human evolution, genetics, and animal & plant behaviour/responses to the environment (with an occasional admixture of biotechnology). At yesterday’s […]
Continue readingLast week the story of a hybrid hominin was in the news: the discovery that remains found in Denisova Cave were those of a 13-year-old girl whose parents were a female Neandertal and a Denisovan male. This was exciting stuff: we already know, from genomic analysis, that interspecies matings involving Neanderthals, Denisovans, and H.sapiens happened […]
Continue readingI've always rather liked ducks, ever since we hand-reared some ducklings back when I was still a school-kid. Mind you, the innocent me of those days didn't know what I know now about the effects of sperm competition and sexual selection on their reproductive organs. (Those of an enquiring mind will learn more – much […]
Continue readingI met with a local biology teacher today to talk about setting up a Schol Bio preparation day in the Waikato, and we also discussed things like the need for critical thinking skills (in addition to a solid base of knowledge from students’ year 12 & year 13 studies and time spent in reading more […]
Continue readingI’m starting to gear up for some Schol Bio preparation days in the regions (hi, Hawkes Bay! See you in 4 weeks!) and realised that I haven’t written anything specifically focused on those exams for a while. So I thought that putting something together would be a good way to spend a rather wet Sunday. […]
Continue readingTomtits and robins were the focus of the first question in the 2016 Schol Bio paper. Specifically, Chatham Island tomtits and robins, which are found only on the Chathams. While at one point they were common and widespread on the islands, the tomtit is classified as nationally endangered, while the black robin is nationally critical […]
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