I read up on the weather conditions of Tundra Biome and found out that its ground is permanently frozen 10 inches to 3 feet (25 to 100 cm) down so trees cannot grow there. The ground is bare and sometimes rocky and can only support low growing plants like mosses, lichen and heaths. In the winter it is cold and dark and in the summer, when the snow and the top layer of permafrost melt, it is very soggy and the tundra is covered with marshes, lakes, bogs and streams that breed thousands of insects and attract many migrating birds. The main seasons are winter and summer. Spring and autumn are only short periods between winter and summer.
Nights can last for weeks when the sun barely rises during some months in the winter and the temperature can drop to -70°C. The place is also extremely windy as the winds can blow between 48 to 97 kilometres per hour. There is little precipitation in the tundra. There is barely any vegetation in the tundra with only 1700 different species. The soil there is very low in nutrients and minerals except where animal droppings fertilise the soil.
The tundra is very fragile. The extremely cold temperatures make it difficult to survive in winter. Plants and animals have a hard time coping with any extra stresses and disturbances. More people moving to the tundra to work in the mines and oil rigs have created towns and more roads. Some animal's movements to traditional feeding and denning grounds have been disrupted by these obstacles.
The tundra is one of Earth's three major carbon dioxide sinks. A carbon dioxide sink is a biomass which takes in more carbon dioxide than it releases. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. During the short time of summer, tundra's plants take in carbon dioxide, sunlight and water in the process of photosynthesis. Plants normally give off carbon dioxide after they die and decompose. But because of the short, cool summer and freezing winter temperatures, plants can't decompose. Remains of plants thousands of years old have been found in the tundra permafrost. This way, the tundra traps the carbon dioxide and removes it from the atmosphere. Today global warming is melting the permafrost of the tundra and every year several fleet of tundra are lost. As the tundra melts, the plant mass decomposes and returns carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Source: http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/tundra.htm
Inter-relationships in the habitat
My animal is the Apex predator of the food web. Its name is Stella stella. I named it Star as I thought of a starfish at first but I did not want it to live in water. Hence, I changed it to star for the species as it is a star species. Stella stella feeds on Blooper and Albus terrorem. We have three decomposers as we notice that it isn't easy for decomposition to take place in the tundra as it is a biomass. Hence, we included more decomposers. We have a producer, the Orange Venus Plant. Blooper and Albus terrorem feeds on it.
Our group discussed about how to make our food web more even as we knew and read up about the biome that it takes a longer time than usual to decompose in the tundra. Hence, we decided to make 3 of us decomposers. We were thinking that with more decomposers, we would need a lesser time to decompose everything in the biome, saving space and returning nutrients to the soil.
A record of relationships between my organism and my group mate's organism
My relationship between one of my group mate's organism, Ursus albus, is a prey and predator. I am the predator and i eat her animal. Her animal is an omnivore, eating both Dionaea maximus and Ursus vulpes. I eat Ursus vulpes too.
Force Fitting Activity and suggestions to my organism
For my force fitting activity, I decided to use one of my favourite cartoon characters, Patrick Star. Since he was an animal, it was rather easy to force fit into it. I just needed to make some adaptations to him. From a marine animal, I changed it to a land animal. At first, I was not sure of what role he would play in the food web, but I thought that he might become a predator. So, I thought of some features he already had for example his flowery pants. Therefore, I suddenly thought of using the flowery pants and say that he could stick flowers to itself and the flowers would attract its prey to it. However, I thought that it was a bit ridiculous as no animal might actually think of that and I wanted it to hunt. Hence, I cancelled the idea. Afterwards, I thought that I could give it sticky skin for it to adopt to the surrounding cold climate. Its sticky skin would allow fur and wool or anything that could keep it warm to stick to it to keep it warm. I also thought that it could camouflage against prey so that prey would not notice it and it can pounce on it secretly. However, my animal walks on two feet so it is like that of a human but not. In order to walk on ice and permafrost, I gave it big paws to walk stably on the ice and permafrost.
Annotated photo guide
I don't have a photo guide as it was difficult for me to take the photos while making my model using clay. Hence, i just drew out a rough sketch of my organism with the different adaptations. I think it might be clearer on the video. I used clay for the entire body. After that, i stuck cotton wool all around it using glue and showed on the group video that it could stick different things on itself to keep it warm.
Reflection
I find this performance task very useful
and creative. It has allowed me to understand more about evolution and helped
me to think about food webs and food chain. The creativity of the performance
task is challenging but fun. The deadline was a bit tight at first but in all
it was still okay. However, the day that we have to arrange to meet up is not
very convenient for us as some of us do not live close to each other and we don’t
really enjoy using the internet platform to discuss as it takes time and is not
as efficient as meeting up. This performance task has definitely allowed me to
think deeper into my imagination and work together as a group.
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