Julia Reich
Mr. Ippolito
AP Biology C Even
11/30/20
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science
News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Jonathan Lambert’s article “These Plants Seem Like They’re Trying to Hide from People” covers the recently evolutionized Fritillaria and its impact on humans and herbivores. The usually bright green plant -- which grows on the tops of Himalayan and Hengduan mountains in southwestern China -- has been grounded into a cough-treating powder for over two-thousand years. The demand for the Fritillaria bulbs is intense; approximately 3,500 of the bulbs are needed to produce just one kilogram of the powder (about $480). Researchers have recently reported, however, that the plant is becoming “remarkably difficult to find.” Its stems and leaves are becoming barely distinguishable from the gray/brown rocky mountains. And it seems, according to Yang Niu, a botanist at the Kunming Institute of Botany in China, that this plant camouflage has evolved in response to humans. Researchers from Current Biology also reported that “Fritillaria delavayi from regions that experience greater harvesting pressure are more camouflaged than those from less harvested areas.” This is significant as the more highly sought areas of harvesting is directly causing the camouflage, proving Niu’s hypothesis that the evolution is due to human activity. Following several hypotheses regarding the evolution of Fritillaria, Yang Niu, his colleague Hang Sun, and Martin Stevens of the University of Exeter in England, tested whether or not humans were driving the evolution of the plants’ camouflage. They found that at the seven study sites they focused on, “The more harvested, or harvestable, a site, the better the color of a plant matched its background, as measured by a spectrometer. ‘The degree of correlation was really, really convincing for both metrics we used,’ Stevens says.”
Niu, Sun, and Stevens’ findings are relevant to our society today as the camouflage of certain plants, such as Fritillaria, could lead to a decrease in certain medicines, such as cough-treating powders. Camouflage also has negative effects on the plant, including not being able to be seen by pollinators. As well, the plants that have evolved to protect themselves from herbivores do not seem to be working well. It seems that animals have been biting the plant’s leaves but not consuming it. As well, the gray/brown coloration could impair photosynthetic activity, which would ultimately lead to a decrease in plants and medicines.
Jonathan Lambert’s article was concise and interesting to read. One aspect he did very well was utilizing simple terms so that the average reader could understand the complex ideas throughout the article. One aspect he could improve on is potentially including a personal opinion. He could add his thoughts on what he believes this human driven evolution will cause in the future. As well, he could have included more quotes from the experts on the Fritillaria camouflage and experts on human driven evolution. This would have been very interesting to read and would help his audience understand why the topic is significant. Overall, the article was well done and I recommend any person at Bronxville to read into the subject.
Kelly Baclija
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Bio
November 30, 2020
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Reich, Julia. Bronxville AP Biology, 1 Jan. 1970, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
Julia’s article on “These Plants Seem Like They’re Trying to Hide from People” by Jonathan Lambert is incredibly well written and exhibits her ability to establish her credibility as a writer. Early in the article, she demonstrates background knowledge on the subject, stating that “the usually bright green plant -- which grows on the tops of Himalayan and Hengduan mountains in southwestern China -- has been grounded into a cough-treating powder for over two-thousand years.” This informs the audience of the information that is needed going forward with the article. Next, she provides a quote for an expert, Martin Stevens of the University of Exeter in England, to back up the fact that she discussed how certain areas are directly causing the camouflage, and thus that the evolution is due to human activity; the quote she uses is, “the more harvested, or harvestable, a site, the better the collar of a plant matched its background, as measured by a spectrometer. ‘ The degree of correlation was really, really convincing for both metrics we used,’ Stevens says.” This persuades the audience that Julia is a credible writer and is able to back up her claims with evidence. Finally, her analysis of the original article makes it more enjoyable to read for the audience with such an eye-opening perspective-- she writes that “Niu, Sun, and Stevens’ findings are relevant to our society today as the camouflage of certain plants, such as Fritillaria, could lead to a decrease in certain medicines, such as cough-treating powders”.
Although Julia’s article is well-written, there are a few areas that could use improvement. For instance, although she states that the plants’ “stems and leaves are becoming barely distinguishable from the gray/brown rocky mountains”, she could have done further research to examine what exactly happens within the plant cells for this phenomenon to occur, which would have further deepened the audience’s knowledge on the topic. Another improvement is that she could have discussed how the plant’s surrounding environment (such as the nearby animals as well as other plants) may be affected by their change in color due to the evolution caused by human activity-- this would have also informed the reader further of the entire situation.
I chose this article because of the attention-grabbing title and I wanted to further investigate what it was about. I learned that these plants view humans as a sort of danger to their existence and thus evolved in order to develop camouflage. This has changed my understanding because it puts into perspective how much of the negative impact humans can have on the environment, and as a species, we should do all that way can in order to prevent that from happening.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOlivia Cevasco
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Biology - C Even
30 November, 2020
Current Event 8 - Comment on Julia Reich’s Review
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science
News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Reich, Julia. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Bronxville AP Biology, 20 Nov. 2020, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
Julia’s review of “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People” discusses a recent study that found the Fritillaria plant’s camouflage has evolved in areas of human activity to increase its protection. Julia does a great job prefacing the research with a relevant backstory that helps explain why the camouflage has evolved. She writes that, “The demand for the Fritillaria bulbs is intense; approximately 3,500 of the bulbs are needed to produce just one kilogram of the powder (about $480).” Because humans are devastating this crop by picking such high quantities, the Fritillaria most likely to survive are the ones that have superb camouflage abilities, so natural selection occurs that favors increased camouflage. Second, Julia quotes the best ideas and explanations from the main article to make the scientists’ findings clear. Julia quotes “The more harvested, or harvestable, a site, the better the color of a plant matched its background, as measured by a spectrometer,” and this serves the purpose of explaining observational data to support that the plants in areas of high human activity maintain a color that neatly camouflages with the surrounding environment. It also specifies how the data was measured. Third, Julia’s explanations of the connections between camouflage and society were intriguing, in particular how she explained that human activity that causes the camouflage actually has a detrimental effect to humans because it decreases the availability of the plant, meaning less of it will be collected for medicines. Julia describes that an increase in camouflage “could lead to a decrease in certain medicines, such as cough-treating powders.” Wow. So because we’re picking a lot of the plants for medicine, we’re destroying their surrounding environment and we have less of the plants to pick for medicine. It’s a little mind-boggling.
To improve Julia’s review, I’d encourage her to tie this finding back to our summer ecology assignments and explain how this evolution has occurred through natural selection. She says that “This is significant as the more highly sought areas of harvesting is directly causing the camouflage, proving Niu’s hypothesis that the evolution is due to human activity.” Explaining how this evolution is occuring would help the reader to understand the process of how human activity is changing the Fritillaria. Second, I’d encourage Julia to include numerical data to back the strong observational data. She quotes the main article, saying that “the color of a plant matched its background, as measured by a spectrometer,” but what were the numbers recorded by the spectrometer before and after the camouflage? Perhaps proving numbers would increase the significance of this event and provide a call to action.
I chose to comment on Julia’s review because I was intrigued that we can cause plants to evolve, that plants are adapting to hide in our world instead of succumbing to it. I enjoyed reading this review because I learned another instance of how human actions that seemingly help us in the short term actually inversely affect our intentions in the long term. Julia’s review changes my perception of evolution because it broadened my perspective of plant evolution and how our actions cause a ripple effect that affects the other living organisms we share the planet with.
Erin Foley
ReplyDeleteAP Bio C Block Even
Current Event 8 - Comment
Nov. 29th, 2020
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.”
Science News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Reich, Julia. Bronxville AP Biology, 1 Jan. 1970,
bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
Julia’s review of the article “ “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People” was interesting, well-supported and easy to understand. She chose an obscure topic - human-driven evolution of plants - with a catchy title; how would plants “hide” from people? Immediately my attention was caught and as I read on I was increasingly interested by her descriptions. For instance, her introduction of the plant to the reader, “The usually bright green plant -- which grows on the tops of Himalayan and Hengduan mountains in southwestern China”, makes the topic seem exotic and intriguing, as I know very little about the Himalayas/southwestern China. Moreover, she used various esteemed sources to support the idea that the plants’ evolution is human-driven, increasing the reliability of her argument. She explicitly cites “Yang Niu, a botanist at the Kunming Institute of Botany”, “Researchers from Current Biology” and “Hang Sun, and Martin Stevens of the University of Exeter in England”, guaranteeing the accuracy of her review. Finally, Julia explained the concept of human-driven evolution on Fritillaria in an informative yet concise manner, making the article easy to understand for anyone, despite lack of biology knowledge. The description of the conducted experiments that she included, i.e. “Fritillaria delavayi from regions that experience greater harvesting pressure are more camouflaged than those from less harvested areas” paints a picture of direct correlation in the readers without having to show tangible evidence.
Julia’s review made for an enjoyable and easy read, but she could further strengthen it with a few minor changes. For one thing, Julia could provide more information on how the plant evolved to become more camouflage (i.e. what genes were turned on/off? Was the change originally caused by a mutation?). This would make her article more academic and reinforce her review’s connection to biology. Secondly, it would be interesting if she included the relevance of human-driven evolution in general, not just in the context of the Fritillaria. Her description of the significance of the article, “could lead to a decrease in certain medicines, such as cough-treating powders”, is quite narrow, but human-driven evolution is extremely significant in other areas as well. For instance, if she described other instances of human-driven evolution in plants or animals - in the context of global warming, perhaps - readers would understand that human-driven evolution is visible everywhere, not just in Asia.
Despite room for improvement, this review gave me a deeper understanding of our impact on the ecosystems around us. As humans, we have the power to change the life courses of generations of other organisms, merely by using them for things like cough medicine. What may help a cough might alter the genetic makeup of a plant species; what might make us cheaper and more efficient paper might destroy the amazon forest. I chose this review because the title drew me in, and now I understand why and how plants are literally hiding from us. I now have the impression that this human-driven evolution could apply to many other aspects of our global biome, and that it is essential for us to be conscious and thoughtful of human activity.
Annabelle Krause
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Bio
November 29th, 2020
Reich, Julia. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Bronxville AP
Biology, 20 Nov. 2020, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science
News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Overall, Julia’s review was very strong. She made use of strong descriptors, like “usually bright green plant -- which grows on the tops of Himalayan and Hengduan mountains in southwestern China,” to contextualize her later discussion of the plant and its importance. She set up the article well, and she gave us the information that we needed to understand why this is important and where the conversation takes place. As a reader, this brief introduction was very useful to my understanding for the rest of the article. Second, Julia did a good job of explaining why this was generally important. She explained that the demand for the Fritillaria bulbs is intense because approximately 3,500 of the bulbs are needed to produce just one kilogram of the powder for cough treatment medications. Without this information, the reader would not have known why we had to care about the Fritillaria plant, something that most people have never heard of. Julia continued to utilize quotes from the article to emphasize further why we should care about the Fritillaria’s adaptations, like when she quoted that it was “remarkably difficult to find.” Lastly, she briefly discussed the science and ecology to connect the more qualitative idea back to scientific study. She mentioned that the plant has begun to camouflage in response to human activity especially in “regions that experience greater harvesting pressure.” Although she did not fully develop this idea, it was an interesting connection to our study of ecology.
As mentioned, Julia could have done more to connect our study of ecology from the summer to her article. She did not mention natural selection or use the term to further her analysis of Fritillaria’s evolution. The connection is quite obvious because it was a large part of our studies, but it would have been helpful if Julia had taken this into account. Secondly, Julia mentioned some quantitative ideas briefly, but she did not use data to back it up. It would have been helpful if she had used numbers and statistics, like the percentage with camouflage color change versus without in a highly harvested area versus a control, to justify her statement that highly harvested areas have more color change.
I was not aware of Fritillaria’s existence, but the title of the article seemed interesting. It is important to be aware of what goes into the medications that we use and what the limiting factors could be. I enjoyed reading Julia’s take on the article, and I found the science very interesting. This broadened my understanding of plant ecology and of what goes into medicine; hence, why this ecology matters to everyone.
Holden D’Avico
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Bio/Current Event #8
11/30/20
Reich, Julia. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Bronxville AP
Biology, 20 Nov. 2020, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science
News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Julia’s review of Jonathan Lambert’s article, “These Plants Seem Like They’re Trying to Hide from People,” was very informative and well presented. The first aspect that was well presented is when Julia introduces the topic (Fritillaria) and then quickly describes the issue/significance of this topic. Julia explained what Fritillaria was and its use in society today as a natural cough medicine and how Fritillaria has become hard to find because of human behavior and overharvesting. The second aspect that was well presented is when Julia includes the results and data from the experiment conducted by Niu, Sun, and Steven. The inclusion of these results allows the reader to make the valid conclusion that it is indeed human behavior that caused Fritillaria to become camouflage in certain areas of the world where it is overharvested. The third aspect that was in Julia’s second paragraph where she explains why camouflage in certain plants is harmful to humans as well as the plants. She explains that if humans overharvest certain plants too much and they start to camouflage themselves in response, the plants will be harmed because it will be harder for pollinators to detect them and also humans could lose access to life-saving medicines that are derived from certain plant ingredients. Julia’s explanation was clear and made the reader realize the significance of this topic.
The first suggestion I have for Julia is to include her own thoughts on the significance of this topic. She explains in the second paragraph that the camouflaging of certain plants is harmful to humans and the plants, however, she didn’t include her own opinion based on that. I would’ve liked to see her take on the significance of the topic she presented. My second suggestion is to include some real data regarding the experiment she mentioned in the first paragraph of her review. It would’ve been interesting to see the significant results in numbers as that would make the reader more confident in making a conclusion.
A fact that I was impressed by is the amount of Fritillaria needed to produce the cough powder. Julia writes that “approximately 3,500 of the bulbs are needed to produce just one kilogram of the powder (about $480),” (Reich). This was surprising to me because it made me understand why this plant was overharvested. Coughing is probably the most common symptom that people experience year-around so cough medicine is always in demand. If 3,500 bulbs of Fritillaria are used for just one kilogram of cough powder, it makes sense that it has been overharvested and become harder to find over the years. This also made me realize that we have to be more conservative with how we harvest raw materials and resources or else in the near future we will run out of a lot of ingredients used to create life-saving medicine as well as other necessities.
Ava Black
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Bio
11/29/30
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Reich, Julia. Bronxville AP Biology, 1 Jan. 1970, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
Julia’s review of “These Plants Seem Like They’re Trying to Hide from People” is extremely well written and thoughtfully organized. Julia did a great job of explaining the issue, proving that she really understands this topic well. When providing information on the Fritillaria, Julia includes a description on what it looks like, where it grows, and why it is in such high demand. These simple facts are crucial for the reader to better understand the severity of this issue, and Julia does a great job of incorporating them into her review. I also liked how Julia included quotes and cited research centers to help backup her claim and ensure its reliability. It is evident that Julia researched this topic thoroughly. In addition, Julia did a great job of explaining the significance of this issue. She explains that the plants’ ability to camouflage has negative effects, such as not being seen by pollinators.
Although Julia did a great job of reviewing the article, I believe that she could further enhance this current event by furthering her research. For instance, her statements would be even more convincing if statistical evidence was involved that showed this evolution in the plant’s camouflage. It would have also been beneficial to incorporate ways in which scientists were trying to solve this issue and prevent further camouflaging.
I chose to read Julia’s review because I was interested in learning more about how a plant could evolve in a certain way as a response to human contact. I learned that this plant is extremely important because it can be made into cough-treating powder. It’s ability to camouflage as a response to humans is actually threatening the survival of this plant (as pollinators are unable to locate it) as well as the creation of certain medications. This current event enabled me to further understand how much of an impact humans have on the environment.
Nate Kim
ReplyDelete11/29/20
Ap Bio, Mr. Ippolito
Current Event 8
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Reich, Julia. Bronxville AP Biology, 1 Jan. 1970, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
Julia’s analysis of “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People” is a perfect example of analysis that gives the reader a full understanding of the article being analyzed. Julia does a great job of integrating her own commentary with the facts from the article. The analysis has great flow where Julia basically seamlessly integrates facts and information with the summary of the article. I also liked that she gave a possible use for the information from the article. Her explanation of the possibility of less medicines because of the lack of Fritillaria bulb powder is concerning for the general public. I also appreciated Julia’s return to the implications of 1) plants camouflaging and 2) this behavior as a result of human activity. This news is incredibly shocking!
Although I think Julia’s review was top-notch, I believe there are some areas for improvement. Julia uses sophisticated vocabulary that could make her writing a little hard to understand for readers that are not well-versed in the field of biology or science in general. This is easily remedied by just defining more terms or using simpler language. Words like “spectrometer” are terms that should be explained because as an audience member even I don’t know what this machine does. Additionally, it would have been beneficial if Julia named some specific medicines that the bulb powder is in. Giving specific examples, helps the readers identify how this news will affect them. If you do not connect news to the average reader, they will probably forget it because they won’t think it's important to them.
The implications of Julia’s article and analysis are concerning to say the least. With the sheer quantity of bulbs required for a decent amount of powder, we already needed every bulb we could get. I wonder how this will affect the prices of common medicines that I use in my daily life. I probably wouldn’t even notice or care to look if I hadn’t seen Julia’ analysis. That’s the crazy thing about the prices of products. Sometimes they just raise the price and if you don’t remember what the price was before you think nothing of it and pay the higher price. Hopefully, this new development doesn’t negatively affect distribution or stock too much. Overall, this analysis was extremely helpful and informative.
Reich, Julia. “Bronxville AP Biology.” Blogspot.com, 29 Nov. 2020, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html#comment-form. Accessed 29 Nov. 2020.
ReplyDeleteLambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science
News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
In Julia’s review of “These Plants seem Like They’re Trying to Hide from people” I really enjoyed Julia’s well crafted summary and thoughtful insight into the topic. Julia did a very great job of summarizing the article. This is very important to the reader of the review because without a good summary, it is very hard to understand their insight into the topic. Also, the summary provides a good foundation for her insight that she provides later in the review. To add onto her summary, she provides very good evidence and quotes for her claims. All throughout the article she is using quotes from the article to provide evidence for summaries and her own claims. This was very well done and provides supporting evidence for her insights and opinions. Lastly, the in depth background information that Julia provided was very well utilized. The review felt heavily researched and Julia definitely had a strong knowledge of the topic.
My first suggestion for this review is to provide more information about her own thoughts on the topic. As mentioned before, there was a strong presence of research and quotations in this review, however there was an absence of original through and insight throughout the review. I would recommend that Julia add a paragraph about her own insights, so she is forced to add in her own insight. Secondly, I would suggest that Julia make more outside connections. It is always important to understand the broad scope of the issue. For this particular topic, Julia could have connected it to our study of ecology that we discussed previously in the year. She could have used our knowledge of natural selection or any particular term from our studies to advance her analysis of Fritillaria’s evolution. Other than these points, her review was very strong.
What organically attracted me to this article was my interest in plant evolution and human interference. This was a very interesting review because I learned how our human actions seem to help us in the short term (with good intentions) but can seem to hurt the world around us in the long term. Julia’s unique perspective and strong review of this topic definitely broaden my scope of understanding of plant evolution in relation to human interference.
Hugh Duffy
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Bio
November 29, 2020
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Reich, Julia. Bronxville AP Biology, 1 Jan. 1970, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
Julia’s review of “These Plants Seem Like They’re Trying to Hide from People” by Jonathan Lambert was clear and concise. From the beginning of the review, she made a direct point. There was no need to dig for information, as she included everything within the text itself. This quality in a writer makes for interesting articles, as useless word filler loses the attention of the reader. Julia’s analysis was enjoyable to read, as she included key evidence from the article, while minimizing the insignificant points. For example when she quotes, “the usually bright green plant -- which grows on the tops of Himalayan and Hengduan mountains in southwestern China -- has been grounded into a cough-treating powder for over two-thousand years.'', she includes an important context point that someone who didn't read the original article would otherwise miss. There aren’t many downsides to Julia’s review, but I would have liked to see more emphasis on the issue of whether this phenomenon will occur in other plants, that seems to be the most important part. If this were to happen with other drug-creating plants, we may have to define therapeutics. I chose this article because of the title, I originally thought it was a plant that could physically move, so I was baited into reading it; of course this was good anyway, as it was an interesting article. I learned that humans have had a permanent impact on the evolutionary history of plants, and this could extend into other fields such as agriculture and other medicines. Julia’s review was well written, and easy to read.
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
ReplyDeleteReich, Julia. Bronxville AP Biology, 1 Jan. 1970, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
Julia's review of "These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People" by Jonathan Lamber was a very well written piece. Julia is able to get right into the topic and is very precise about her points. This article was interesting as even thought it was a very informative review, it was very well organised and easy to read. When she quotes "the usually bright green plant... which grows on the tops of Himalayan and Hengduan mountains in southwestern chia... has been grounded into a cough-treating powder for over two thousand years", she takes a part of the article that may have mistakenly been thought as a meaningless quote, and makes it a critical part of her essay. I would have liked for Julia to make a connection to different types of plants that are more popularly known so it would have been easier to visualise these plants. I chose this article as I am curious on exactly how a plant would hide from humans.
Milly Koenig
ReplyDeleteMr. Ippolito
AP Bio
12/9/30
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Reich, Julia. Bronxville AP Biology, 1 Jan. 1970, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
Julia did a very good job when writing her review of the article “These Plants Seem Like They’re Trying to Hide from People”, her writing is very clear and her thoughts are very organised. One thing that Julia did very well when writing this review was explaining the context of the issue and demonstrated her deep understanding. When she was giving information about the Fritillaria in her review, she was sure to explain what it looks like and how it functions, and why everyone wants it. Although this description may seem very simple, it is important to better understand the article and the severity of the issue. She also does a really good job weaving this understanding through her writing. Her understanding of the implications of this is very clear and she does a good job expressing this, explaining the plants ability to camouflage as a negative thing, showing how they cannot be seen by pollinators. Additionally, Julia did a good job including quotes in her writing and citing them so that we can see her research is based in facts and makes her writing that much more credible.
Despite Julias great review and understanding of the topic, I believe that her writing could have been improved by looking for more research. If Julia added an additional reference from another source, her argument would have been a lot stronger and her claims would be even more convincing if there were more statistics to back them up. She could have referenced the evolution of plant camouflage or the implications that it has had in the past. Another thing that Julia could have included in this review to strengthen her claims would be to address what scientists are doing to prevent further camouflage, and how this is working.
I chose to write about Julias review because I knew nothing about this topic and am interested in learning more about plant evolution and how people impact the plants and world around them. I learned a lot about fritillaria, and how plants evolve in relation to their contact with people. I am interested in medicine and so I found this article and review very interesting, as I learned more about plants creating medicines and people's impact on the environment and world.
Casey McKhann
ReplyDelete12/10/20
Ap Bio, Mr. Ippolito
Current Event 9
Lambert, Jonathan. “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” Science News, 20 Nov. 2020, www.sciencenews.org/article/plant-camouflage-people-china-traditional-medicine-fritillaria.
Reich, Julia. Bronxville AP Biology, 1 Jan. 1970, bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/julia-reich-mr.html.
This week I read Julia’s review of “These Plants Seem Like They’re Trying to Hide from People.” I think Julia did a remarkable job explaining the article. She did so in a manner which was concise, understandable, and interesting. While the topic could easily appear boring if it was poorly written, the phrasing and presentation utilized by Julia allowed the topic to be very intriguing. Julia did a very good introducing the problem around the plants and how it affects humans. This allows the reader to get a good grasp of the topic before the later paragraphs. Julia did a very good job in the final paragraph where she analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of the article and the authors writing style.
While Julia did a very good job of summarizing the article and presenting her current event, the review had a few flaws. The most prominent of these was her inability to present the relevance of the information outside of the direct impact of the flowers. The adaptation of these flowers shows a modern day example of an organism evolving to avoid humans. This is not something which you see everyday and is very interesting to observe. It also has implications for future adaptations based on human impact and how our overharvesting of resources could be detrimental to our ability to produce important products. I think Julia also could have been more critical of the author and acknowledge more short comings.
I chose to read this summary because the title of the article intrigued me. This article changed my perspective of evolution in a drastic way. I did not realize how sudden and intense the evolution of an organism could be. I always thought of ways in which organisms could potentially evolve but never thought I would see evidence of evolution in modern day. This was very interesting for me. Going forward, I am going to see what prompted this rapid evolution.
For my current event, I read a review by Julia on an article originally published in Science News, titled “These Plants Seem Like They're Trying to Hide from People.” First, Julia did an excellent job when writing her introduction because it immediately grabs the reader's attention by discussing the Fritillaria plant. “The usually bright green plant -- which grows on the tops of Himalayan and Hengduan mountains in southwestern China -- has been grounded into a cough-treating powder for over two-thousand years. The demand for the Fritillaria bulbs is intense; approximately 3,500 of the bulbs are needed to produce just one kilogram of the powder (about $480).” This caught my attention and made me want to continue reading. Julia also did a good job explaining the importance of this study. For example, “Niu, Sun, and Stevens’ findings are relevant to our society today as the camouflage of certain plants, such as Fritillaria, could lead to a decrease in certain medicines, such as cough-treating powders. ” This quote is a key point in the article. Lastly, I appreciate how Julia was able to make a connection between the topic and the reader by clearly explaining how this plant is important to us because of its medicinal properties.
ReplyDeleteAlthough her review was very well written, there are certain areas in which she could have improved. For example, she should have included more statistics on the plants because they allow the reader to understand the topic in greater depth. Secondly, Julia should have explained theFritillaria's evolutionary advantages.
Julia’s current event was very interesting to read and informative. Her current event has made me want to learn more about the Fritillaria plant’s evolution and unique properties.