Part A:

Almost every place on Earth, from the surface of your skin to the bottom of the ocean, is filled with living things. To keep track of the vast diversity of life, biologists historically named and classified organisms according to their appearance. The system of categorizing organisms is known as taxonomy. Today, scientists classify organisms into taxonomic groups (taxa) according to their evolutionary history. This discipline is known as systematics.

The Virtual Systematics Lab features a collection of pictures and descriptions of diverse species that represent major evolutionary pathways. In the Systematics Lab, you can explore 5 different taxonomic classification schemes that biologists have used (from the traditional Linnaean scheme to the current 3-domain system).

In this activity, you will learn how to use the Virtual Systematics Lab to identify the characteristics that various organisms share, and determine the relatedness of different taxa.

Purpose:

State the purpose of the lab.

Introduction:

This is an investigation of what is currently known about the question being asked. Use background information from credible references to write a short summary about concepts in the lab. List and cite references in APA style.

Hypothesis / Predicted Outcome:

An hypothesis is an "educated guess." Based on what you have learned and written about in the Introduction, state what you expect to be the results of the lab procedures.

Methods:

Summarize the procedures that you used in the lab.

The Methods section should also state clearly how data (numbers) were collected during the lab; these will be reported in the Results/ Outcome section.

Results/Outcome:

Provide here any results / data that were generated doing the lab procedure.

Discussion/Analysis:

In this section, state clearly whether you obtained the expected results, and the outcome was as expected. Note: You can use answers to any multiple choice or essay questions you filled out in the lab to help you discuss the results and what you learned.

Provide references in APA format. This includes a reference list and in-text citations for references used in the Introduction section.

Give your paper a title and number and identify each section as specified above. Although the hypothesis will be a one sentence answer, the other sections will need to be paragraphs to adequately explain your experiment.

1. Locate the main window of the Systematics Lab Room--it is the large white box that shows taxonomic pathways, commonly known as evolutionary trees.

What three taxa appear in the main window when you first enter the Systematics Lab Room? At what level of classification are these three taxa?

Essay answers are limited to about 500 words (3800 characters maximum, including spaces).

Attachment:- biology-Lab.docx