To begin class today we finished our dogfish shark dissections. My group did not have a lot left to do so we finished pretty quickly. After everyone finished their dissections we cleaned up the lab and by that time class was about half way done. After cleaning up we had another two groups present their projects. The first group discussed echolocation and particularly dolphin echolocation. They presented a couple of interesting things, the first was dolphins use echolocation before during and after capturing prey. They also talked about how as the dolphin approaches its prey, the rate of echolocation spikes and right before the prey is captured the echolocation drops about 10 decibles. The article even showed that echolocation plays a role in hunting because the dolphins could find the prey blind folded too. Next we dicussed the second article which basically supported what we learned ealier this week and last week; temperate difference especially small ones can completely disrupt coral growth and development. This article showed that coral exposed to higher levels of heat mature faster and have a lower survivability rate. This is because coral unlike humans does not develop in a protect environment so heat can mess with their enzymes and thus disturb development. After this class was basically over so we were assigned a project and then class ended.
