Extinction

By: Miguel Perez
Problem statement: Habitat destruction's effect on extinction.

Background: Extinction is when the last living member dies. This means a species will certainly go extinct when the members left can’t reproduce. This is called functionally extinct. But pinpointing the extinction of a species is hard and requires we know the species very well. Psuedoextinction is the extinction of a parent species, while a daughter species still lives on. Most species live about 10 million years and then go extinct because of something they can’t fast enough adapt for. There are many causes for extinction and maybe some we don’t yet know. For example, global warming, habitat destruction, deforestation, destruction of food source, over-hunting, natural disasters, or climate change. Coextinction is when one species goes extinct because of the extinction of another. For example when a species food source goes extinct it will then go extinct. This type of extinction is common with keystone species. An example of coextinction is when the Haast’s Eagle went extinct when it’s food source the moa went extinct. Mass extinctions are when most of the earth’s species have gone extinct. Though not rare they are devastating. But have opened the way for other species like us. There have only been five mass extinctions in the history of the world. The most famous one is the one that killed off all the dinosaurs. This one is known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. Also extinctions are not a thing of the past or a new thing of today. We are dealing with and trying to stop them today. We aren’t having much success, but were trying. For example, the polar bear, we have tried to stop its extinction for years, but it isn’t working. Some humans want to help but can’t, want to help and are helping, and humans who are so cruel that they don’t care. But there have been some planned extinctions by humans. But that is only for viruses like smallpox. This is because these are dangerous diseases that we must get rid of. For example, polio after we did our work is very rare and probably extinct in most the world. Some extinctions are not a bad thing.

Hypothesis: If there habitat destroyed then less crickets will survive.

Materials:
 * a cricket eating animal(1)
 * crickets(60)
 * a artificial habitat(1)
 * a aquarium(1)
 * removable structures(1-3)
 * a container for the insects(1)

Procedures:

 * 1) Set up aquarium with tree
 * 2) Put lizards in aquarium
 * 3) Feed 10 crickets to lizard once daily for 3 days
 * 4) Collect data
 * 5) Take out tree
 * 6) Feed 10 crickets to lizard daily for 3 days
 * 7) Collect data
 * 8) Write down results and analyze