6.L.4B.3 RESPONSE TO ENVIRONMENTAL STIMULI (2024)

WEEK 5 RESPONSE TO ENVIRONMENTAL STIMULI

Essential Knowledge
It is essential for students to know that a complex set of responses to stimuli is called behavior. Behavioral responses refer to how animals cope with changes in their environments. Animals may respond to environmental stimuli through behaviors that include hibernation, migration, defense, and courtship.

Hibernation
● As a result of cold, winter weather (stimulus) some animals will hibernate.
● Hibernation is a state of greatly reduced body activity, used to conserve food stored in the body.
● Some animals hibernate for part or all of the winter.
● The animal's body temperature drops, its heartbeat and breathing slow down, and it uses very little energy.
● Examples of hibernating animals may be ants, snakes, black bears, beavers, and ground squirrels.

Migration
● Migration is the movement of animals from one place to another in response to seasonal changes. They travel to other places where food is available.
● Migrating animals usually use the same routes year after year.
● The cycle is controlled by changes in the amount of daylight and the weather.
● Examples of animals that migrate are monarch butterflies, orcas, caribou, ducks and salmon

Defense
● Defense mechanisms vary with different types of animals. Some examples are:
Camouflage: Some animals have protective coloration to survive changes in its environment. Some animals develop their camouflage in response to the weather. For example, the arctic fox and snowshoe hare develop a white coat for the winter to blend in with the snow and a gray coat in the summer to blend in with the forest. Chameleons and other lizards change colors to blend into the environment to avoid predators.
Smells: Skunks use an offensive odor in response to fear. The skunk turns the predator's sense of smell against it by issuing a stream of oily, foul smelling musk.
Stingers: Wasps and bees use a stinger for protection when frightened or threatened.
Ejection: The black ink cloud of an octopus is a defense mechanism because it gives the animal a chance to escape from a predator. When the horned lizard gets really scared, it shoots blood out of its eyes allowing it time to escape.
Mimicry: When a weaker animal copies stronger animals' characteristics to warn off predators. Some animals may look like another more poisonous or dangerous animal that give it protection, such as a “false” coral snake or hawk moth caterpillar that looks like a snake. Certain moths have markings that look like eyes and some flower flies resemble black and yellow wasps that have a powerful sting and use this disguise to ward off predators.
Grouping: This social behavior occurs when certain animals travel together in groups to protect individuals within the group or to fool a predator into thinking the group is one large organism. Examples may include herds (buffalo, zebra, cattle), packs (wolves), or schools of fish.

Courtship
● Courtship in animals is usually a behavioral process whereby adults of a species try to attract a potential mate.
● Courtship behaviors ensure that males and females of the same species recognize each other.
● Environmental stimuli, such as seasonal changes, will stimulate courtship.
● Often sensory cues such as chemical odor cues, sounds, or color will serve as courtship attractants in animals.Extended Knowledge
• The student should be able to obtain and communicate information that describes why a specific animal’s defense is particularly effective at discouraging the types of predators that animal encounters in its environment.
• The student may also construct explanations that show how courtship behaviors can increase the chances an animal gets eaten by a predator.

Assessment Guidance
The objective of this indicator is to construct explanations of how animal responses to environmental stimuli allow them to survive and reproduce. Therefore, the primary focus of assessment should be for students to construct explanations from primary or secondary sources, predictions based on observations and measurements, and data communicated in graphs, tables, or diagrams that the ways animals respond to their environment enables them to survive and reproduce. This could include but is not limited to students obtaining and evaluating weather data and communicating predictions based upon this evidence of how animals will respond to the changes in the seasons. Students can also analyze collected data, from graphs or data tables, and use this evidence to predict whether the animals will respond by hibernating, reproducing, and/or migrating.
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In addition to construct explanations, students should ask questions; plan and carry out investigations; engage in argument from evidence; obtain, evaluate and communicate information; develop and use models; and construct devices or design solutions.

Thank you so much Ms. Kerri Quick of NMBM for the Nearpod activity below! YOU ROCK!6.L.4A.1&6.L.5B.2

Students, you will be asked to give your name/nickname (only give your first/last real name) and then put your teacher's last name in the "other (optional)" space. Use the Nearpod Activity Notes pages to be actively engaged in your blended learning group and to receive full credit.

6.L.4B.3 Construct explanations of how animal responses (including hibernation, migration, grouping, and courtship) to environmental stimuli allow them to survive and reproduce.

ANIMAL ACTIVITIES

Animal Observation Charts One and Two

*If your class had crickets or worms that died, use these videos to fill out the form.