The Web is a wonderful resource for looking at images of faraway places. You can even view scenes from across the world as they take place! Many of the researchers working in Antarctica have made images of their work available over the Web. For this portion of your research, you will examine images of Antarctic organisms to see how they have adapted to the extremely harsh conditions of the coldest, highest, driest, windiest continent.
For this investigation, focus on the pictures you see, instead of the text. Imagine that you are a marine biologist; you have to make hypotheses about the animal adaptations based on your observations from the field! To conduct your investigation, work as scientists do—predict what you may discover, make observations, and record what you see. Look for patterns. Afterwards, offer hypotheses to explain those patterns. Don't worry if your hypotheses are sketchy right now; any testable hypothesis is a valid starting point. When scientists test their hypothesis and discover that their observations and data do not match their hypothesis, they redefine their investigation by improving the test and gathering more data, or refining the original hypothesis based on the new data before testing again. In your investigation, you can return to the computer if you need to observe more details. Then revise your hypothesis or develop a new one based on each new round of observations.
Several Web sites are listed here; each of them is filled with images of Antarctic organisms. Visit the sites and select some organisms on which to focus. Use the questions on the next page to guide your investigation and your journal notes. Include drawings in your notes. If you're working with a team, remember to record in your own journal your observations about the way Antarctic organisms have adapted to the extreme environment in which they live.
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/About_Antarctica/Wildlife/
Select "Penguins," "Albatross," "Other Birds," "Fish and Squid," "Land Animals," "Terrestrial Plants," "Whales and Seals," and "Krill."
http://www.polar.org/
Click on "Photo Gallery." From there, you can see images from the Antarctic Sun and from the National Science Foundation. All kinds of Antarctic images are included; just choose images of Antarctic organisms.
http://www.ecoscope.com/biomass3.htm#fig01
This site has a lot of images of Antarctic krill; you need to scroll through the text to click on image names in order to see them. Make sure to look at full images of krill and at krill pleopods.
http://www.worldoceans.com/m_ant.htm
There are three pages in this photo gallery; and there are images of organisms on all three pages, but especially on pages two and three.
- What organisms live in Antarctica? Where in Antarctica do they live? What organisms can't live there? Why not? What are the common needs of organisms in Antarctica?
- What are the specialized needs of different organisms in Antarctica and how have they adapted to meet these needs?
- How do adaptations combine to help individual organisms within a species survive? How do adaptations of different species combine to help both survive?