1. Design and build or draw or bake a creature of your choice, using the criteria below.
2. Present your creature to the class during the last week of school on a day to be announced. Use the information listed in the evaluation section as a guideline for organization of your oral report.
3. Turn in a written paper using the format listed below.

GRADING CRITERIA:

Your project must show mastery of these concepts:

1. Creature’s habitat, including biome
2. Creature’s method of getting energy: respiration, fermentation, or photosynthesis –and an explanation of how that method works. Identify your creature as a producer or consumer; predator or prey species; where it is on the food pyramid. Draw its food web. Construct a food chain for one item of the creature’s diet.
3. Special behavior of the creature.
4. Special interactions is may have with its fellow species mates. Include type of population structure.
5. Describe major body systems and explain how they work. Required: circulatory, respiratory, digestive, excretory, skeletal, and nervous systems.
6. Identify and explain method of reproduction
7. Identify genetic material and explain how it is copied and passed from one generation to the next.
8. Discuss genetic aspects of creature: Number of chromosomes, genetic disorders found in species, sex-linked traits, etc.
9. Choose one trait that this creature has and tell whether it is dominant or recessive. Draw a pedigree for that trait for your creature that shows at least three generations and 10 individuals. Be prepared for me to ask you to do a difficult, multiple allele, codominance genetics problem on the first day of the oral presentations.
10. Tell about this species’ ancestors and how this species developed from them. Use terms such as migration, genetic isolation, geographic isolation, adaptation, gene flow, genetic drift, mutation, natural selection, etc.

PAPER GUIDELINES:

Underlined items should appear as major headings in the paper.
Title page: Project name, class name, date, and your name.
Introductory paragraph
Ecology: include items 1-4 above
Body Systems: include items 6-9 above
Change Over Time: Item 10 above
Conclusion

EVALUATION FORM

Everyone will use the following evaluation form to grade others, so keep your presentation and paper in this order! Points will be awarded for everything below. If you have it and it is correct, you will receive full points, otherwise you will not receive full points.

ECOLOGY

Body Systems

Reproduction and Genetics

Changes over Time

Miscellaneous