Continuing Life Processes, Ecology and Evolution

Table of Contents

Introduction
The power of memory – how to remember all that stuff 

1 Investigations in year 13 
The Level 3 investigation 
How to achieve: background to the scientific method 
Types of investigations you may be looking at 
Investigations in action 

2 Biology issues in today’s society 
Deciding which issue to study 
Topical socio-scientific issues 

3 Animal behaviour and plant responses 
The environment and responses to it 
Orientation in time (circaannual, circadian, circalunar and circatidal rhythms) 
Timing in animals 
Endogenous and exogenous rhythms 
Timing in plants 
Orientation responses 
Plant orientation: Tropic and nastic responses 
Animal orientation responses: kinesis and taxes 
Homing 
Migration 
Navigation 
Interspecific relationships 
Intraspecific relationships 
Territoriality 
Reproductive behaviour 
Co-operative behaviour 
Hierarchical behaviour in social animals 

4 Maintaining a stable internal environment 
How do homeostatic mechanisms work? 
Examples of homeostatic mechanisms 
NZ scientists working in the homeostasis field 

5 Processes leading to speciation 
Terms used in speciation 
Recapping Year 12 biology: species, mutations and gene pools 
The role of natural selection and genetic drift in evolution 
Speciation 
Reproduction isolating mechanisms that lead to speciation 
Polyploidy 
Types of evolution 
Rates of evolution 
Evidence for evolution 

6 Human evolution 
Evolution 
Being a primate 
Studying hominin evolution: Paleoanthropology 
Introduction to hominins: Where did we come from? 
The earliest hominins 
The genus Australopithecus 
The genus Homo 
Homo sapiens: modern humans 
Dispersal from Africa
 
7 The biological implications of manipulating genetic material 
How is the genetic material manipulated by humans? 
Method 1: Selective breeding 
Method 2: Modifying the expression of existing genes 
Method 3: Cloning organisms 
Method 4: Transgenics 

8 Scholarship 
So you want to sit scholarship biology?