Fossils are a glimpse into the distant past and fascinate young and old alike. This unit will introduce you to the explosion of evolution that took place during the Palaeozoic era. You will look at the many different types of creatures that existed at that time and how they managed to evolve to exist on land.

Roles of neural plasticity in learning and memory and in development of invertebrates and mammals. An in-depth critical analysis of current literature of molecular, cellular, genetic, electrophysiological, and behavioral studies. Discussion of original papers supplemented by introductory lectures.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Soil-dwelling animals play critical roles in terrestrial ecosystems. Despite the importance of these animals, little is known about their microbiomes. To address this, a recent study systematically characterized the microbiomes of ecologically important soil dwelling invertebrate groups across China. Each taxon of invertebrates had diverse microbiomes that contained ‘unique’ microbial taxa that were not found in surrounding soils. Both random effects and deterministic ones, like host selection, played a role in the microbial community assembly. The researchers also found several unidentified microbial taxa and evidence that this ‘microbial dark matter’ played potentially important ecological roles. When moving up the food web, the microbial diversity, the number of ‘unique’ taxa, and the ecological role of unknown taxa increased..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This document provides a simplified version of an investigation that uses quadrats to compare habitats in your schoolyard. Depending on your focus, the activity can be adapted to compare the diversity or amount of ground insects, invertebrates or plants in two areas. Students use the Next Generation Science Standards’ Planning and Carrying Out Investigations practice and the Cause and Effect and/or Stability and Change crosscutting concepts to build understanding of the needs of animals, differences in ecosystems and/or change in ecosystems.

This activity allows students to brainstorm investigable questions, conduct an experiment, and communicate the results related to our invertebrate animal study; specifically sponges and absorption. (Lesson is based on an original activity from "Porifera's Porosity", Holt Science and Technology - Animals, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston 2002, pages 50-51.)

This lesson helps grade 3 students understand the difference between Vertebrates and Invertebrates.