Niche
One of the cow nose ray's niche is eating shellfish. They contribute to their ecosystem by consuming the shellfish so that they don't become over populated. If their habitat does become overpopulated with shellfish the carrying capacity could be reached. This could cause the environment to start to deteriorate and no longer be able to support the ray. If it can't support the ray, then they will have to migrate and this could cause other ares to become over populated and deplete all of the resources it needs to survive. The cownose ray's niche helps to preserve its environment.
Reflection
I have learned a lot about the cownose ray through the making of this project. I learned how many chromosomes were in each of the cownose ray’s cells. I learned about its ancestors and how the ray’s have evolved over the years. I also learned about some of the parasites that they can carry. Plus i learned a lot about how human activity can impact their environment and how they respond to it. There was also some information difficult for me to find about the cownose ray’s. The number of chromosomes was one of them. I wasn’t able to find examples of commensalism or parasitism for the rays. Plus it was also difficult for me to find out my organisms niche. Mainly because I didn’t fully understand what exactly a niche was, but once I did it wasn’t that hard to write about it. Overall it was really interesting to learn so many things about the cownose ray through the making of this project.
I really enjoyed doing this project. I learned a lot from doing this project. It was the first website that I have ever made, so it was pretty cool to make one and figure out all of the stuff that I could put on it. It was one of my favorite project to do (mainly because I love learning about animals). It was also fun to look at my friends websites and see what they had done and to learn about their animals that they had picked to do their project on. I’m really glad that I had the opportunity to do this project.
There was one part that was overall challenging for me. I had a hard time doing the last part, part five. Mainly because it was due close to the end of the school year which is close to exams. I was also on vacation at the beach for Memorial day and I didn’t want to do any school work. I did not realize it was due on the twenty sixth until the friday before. Plus there was a lot of drawing parts to do and I can’t draw very well and I get nervous uploading pictures because for the first part I tried uploading a picture of my drawing and it deleted everything the day before it was due. I also do not like writing very much either. It is hard for me to meet the required word limits on paper. All of the other parts were fairly easy to complete.
There were a lot of parts that I really liked doing. Although I enjoyed doing part three the most. It was really short, so it didn’t take me very long to complete the section. It was also really easy to do. Plus I really like doing punnett squares because they are easy to do and I think that it is interesting to find out what the outcomes would be for each phenotype that I picked. I really enjoyed doing this project.
The cownose ray eats organisms like clams and oysters. The clams and oysters have shells; the ray leaves behind their shells and their shells become marine deposits.
sharks (1)
Cownose ray (10)
Clams (100)
Plankton (1,000)
Seaweed (10,000)
Cownose ray (10)
Clams (100)
Plankton (1,000)
Seaweed (10,000)