Design an Imaginary Organism

Each of us who now looks at his own patch of work sees Mendel's clue running through it: whither that clue will lead, we dare not yet surmise.

- William Bateson in 1902 (for a biography of Bateson, visit Cold Harbor Laboratory's DNA from the Beginning Web site, found on page 7 of the Mentor Guidelines Web site)

Final Assessment (Personal Journal Entry 18)

While the imaginary naturalist in Problem Set 1 experimented on the lizardos, one of his colleagues set off into the interior of the island to look for other new species. What new imaginary species did she find?

Get out your journal! We have some science to do!

1. The answer is up to you. Design an imaginary organism that a naturalist might discover on a tropical island. (Do you feel like a mad scientist designing fantastical critters? Look ahead: you can't be too Frankenstein-ish about this creation!) Provide a name and a general description. Use the Sensory Description Rubric from The Writer's Journey, Volume 1, and adapt as needed with your mentor so that it suits your purposes here. Remember, your creature has never been seen before, so you want to render it visually in words. Looks, sounds, smells, textures, and other sensory aspects should be noted.
2. If you have some artistic skills, draw a sketch of what the organism might look like. While the species is imaginary, it should not be physically impossible; use your knowledge of Darwinian evolution to create an organism that could realistically have evolved on a tropical island. You may wish to do some research on real species in order to envisage your new one.
3. Now that you have a sense of what this organism is like, think about what variation there might be in its population. Record three traits the organism has that exhibit some variation. For each of these traits, list two alleles. Once again, try to imagine alleles that might actually provide an organism with some survival advantage in a tropical setting. Decide which of the two alleles you have sketched is the recessive and which is the dominant. Confused? Need an example?
4. Draw five different individuals of the species, with each phenotype exhibiting different combinations of traits. For each individual, choose agenotype that can match the individual's phenotype (each of these genotypes will include six alleles, two alleles for each of the three traits).
5. The naturalist captures two of the five individuals you have drawn (why don't you let your mentor "capture" (pick) two of the five individuals?). She carries them back to the ship and crosses them in order to begin analyzing their hereditary systems. Draw a Punnett square that will predict the result of this trihybrid cross. Need a hint on how to do this?

Share your work with your mentor.  

Looking for guidance? Consult the work of Melina, 2008 TIP Tester, found here.

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