A crested toad timeline - By RBL

 The Puerto Rican crested toad 

Hello and this is RBL, in this blog I will be looking at the interesting timeline and outline of the Puerto Rican crested toad. I chose this species because I’ve always liked how they look. I also think that they look very unique in lumps on their skin as well.

Puerto rican crested toad (male) - "Puerto Rican Crested Toad, male / Sapo Concho Puertorriqueño,macho" by USFWS/Southeast is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Taken on May 14, 2009

What is the Puerto Rican crested toad?

In Binomial Nomenclature, the spider crab is seen as the Peltophryne lemur. It’s the only toad to be native to different parts of Puerto Rico, but hasn't found anywhere else since.

How have they changed overtime?

They were first found in the northern parts of the karst belt. The Karst belt is a wetland that lives almost entirely off different karst for its water supply. Karst itself is an underground cave-like center The karst region harbors the richest biodiversity in Puerto Rico. Over time the numbers of the crested toad slowly began to dwindle lower and lower. This was until 1931 where they were thought to be extinct for a very long time. This was likely because of their environments changing slowly around different points in those different years. This was until its rediscovery in the northern part of the island in Isabella and in 1974 was found in Quebradillas in Puerto Rico. This was because they were able to adapt to their different environments so they could survive throughout the years. Then a decade later in 1984, the southern population that we know today was found in the Guánica Commonwealth Forest and in 1987, the crested toad was listed by the USFWS as a species threatened for extinction. Today the Puerto Rican crested toad population is slowly growing in size from 300 total to 3,000 of them.

The Golden toad - "Golden Toad" by StanfordWoods is marked with CC PDM 1.0 Taken on May 14, 2009

An extinct relative:

One of the ancestors of the Puerto Rican crested toad is the Costa rican golden toad. The golden toad is now extinct because of environmental causes like climate change, as well as fungal infections. Compared to that the Crested toad did go through some of those environmental changes as well, but was able to adapt to their circumstances so they could survive even up to today. One thing they do have in common is that they are both amphibians, and their eyes are similar in color and size.

Questions for the organism:

Before I got into scientific research I had to look at a few questions to help me look at the Puerto rican crested toad in a few different ways. Here are my responses to each question below:

1. What temperature do they live in?

One article that I looked up that stated this information was by Javorka, Julie titled “Peltophryne Lemur (Ridge-Headed Toad).” This article states that the remaining crested toads live in different parts of the southern forests of Puerto Rico. The climate ranges between from 81 to 85°F and 66% to 83% in humidity. 

2. What makes these toads unique?

The article I looked up to find this information was "Puerto Rican Crested Toad, Facts and Photos" by National Geographic. It gives out two specific things that make the crested toad unique. One of them being their large golden eyes that can help it to see at night. The other fact being that it’s the only toad to be native to Puerto Rico.

3. My quantitative question being,what's the average length of a puerto rican crested toad?

Depending on the gender the size of the Puerto Rican crested toad can be 4 inches for females and 3 inches for males. To give me more options I will convert to millimeters instead of inches, that makes the range 76 - 102 millimeters.

CRT in Public Schools - By RBL

 CRT in Public schools

hello this is RBL here with another blog post. This blog will be based around a video that I've created. It's based around the topic of CRT (critical race theory) that we've been talking about in my class the war on X. I will also post my script under the video if needed. Without further to do, here's my video and I hope you enjoy it.

Video Script:

Critical Race in Theory (CRT) in public schooling 

Over the past 2 weeks in my class War on X, we’ve been studying different aspects of CRT. In this video I’m going to be doing some more research on the topic of CRT.

Slide: What is CRT?

• CRT is the study of different racist acts in the United states and seeing how racism was built into different institutions and has evolved from it.

• Today it’s seen as the study of race and the different topics connected to the impact of race. With this in mind some schools now want to teach students about CRT and the impacts of racism in the United States.

Transition to next slide: Defined Research 

• Now that we’ve established what CRT is, I want to look at a specific question based around CRT, "Why did schools ban the teaching of CRT?"

Transition to next slide: Peoples thoughts 

• One reason why schools are banning CRT being taught in schools is because some parents are hesitant on having their children be taught about CRT for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is having students learn about race and who they are as an individual.

 

• I believe that schools banned teachings of CRT because states thought that if students were learning about each other's races, it would possibly cause conflicts inside the classrooms. There are problems with banning CRT’s process in public schooling. At some point students might see something on the news or experience something that might open them up to race. One of the articles I looked up was, “Here’s what Black students have to say about 'critical race theory' bans”. In this article it states that the battles around the teachings   of racism in the nation’s public schools have risen in the past few months. With this at least five states passed different bills to ban educators from teaching about racial equity. The problem with this is that if we don’t teach students about CRT,they might not be able to understand the different contexts and issues that have to do with race and how it impacts their own identities. 

Next slide: A different perspective

• I first looked at an article on why CRT was banned in Florida titled “Why Is Critical Race Theory Being Banned in Public Schools”? Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, wanted to ban CRT education in public schools because he states that he wants students to judge others based on their actions, or in his words "character education." 

Next slide: Should CRT be banned?

• I still stand that CRT shouldn’t be banned because it’s important that children get to see each other the way they are and to be accepted as young individuals. I also believe that it should be taught in schools because it’s a term that not a lot of students my age know about so it’s important that they should learn about it as well. If students aren’t taught CRT in schools, where else would they be able to learn about critical race theory? An article by James E. Causey also talks about why CRT should be taught in Wisconsin schools stating that, “You can’t teach a sanitized version of race and racism and expect anything to change.” 

Closing:

• Overall CRT has been a topic that has continued to cause controversy overtime. It can become harder and harder for students to not get exposed to it. It’s up to us to educate students about CRT so they can understand it for themselves. Thanks for watching.

Fable Making - By RBL

Fable Making- By RBL

Hello this is RBL and in this blog I will be sharing a fable to you all. Before I do so I made this fable based off a class I'm taking called stories. Fables are shorter stories that usually have animals as the main characters in them that all have a shared lesson. Fables are also important to a lot of cultures and organizations like the national association of black storytellers (N.A.B.S). There important to them because they might show a lesson or moral that the culture might see as important to them fables give the culture something to live off of. If you don't know what a moral is, a moral is a lesson of a story or something a fable is trying to convey. We also had to learn about anthropomorphism, which means to give different animals human like characteristics. We also had my mother Emily Lansana come into our classroom and share some of her stories to us. My Mom is a professional storyteller an has been telling stories to people for many years. This leading into this action project, that being to create a fable. 

This fable is about two wolves who is in search for a cure for his mother's sickness. They both go different ways to find an answer for their problems through experience. Thanks for viewing my blog and I hope you enjoy this fable.

The Compassionate Wolf

Long ago, a wolf named Cassidy lived near soft snowy grounds. His name meant that he was compassionate and clever. Cassidy always practiced sharing food for the good of his pack. His sister, Ellis was cunning and always put herself before others. Their mother Vixen cared for both of them since they lost their father, the pack leader, due to an avalanche that crushed his body under the snow.

One day Vixen fell ill with the parvovirus, an illness that affected wolves far and wide. Vixen spent her days in their den. The other wolves protected her while she was sick. When she was ill, Vixen whispered to her children, “My children, I have fallen ill with parvovirus. You must find a cure for me. Whoever finds a cure for my parvo shall become the new pack leader.” This news startled Cassidy and Ellis into a frozen shock, but since Vixen would be taken care of by the other wolves, they were both confident to search for a treatment for their mother. Early the next morning, when the winds were at ease and the air was as calm as the quiet streams that flow, Cassidy and Ellis went in separate ways to find a cure for Vixen.

Cassidy ran to the owl tree. The owls made the best medicines in the land. Cassidy inquired of the owls, “ Oh wise Owls, my Mother has gotten parvo and could die if I can not find her a cure, will you please give me a treatment”? The owls were not certain if they could trust Cassidy. They were worried that Cassidy might eat them all for a good morning breakfast. So the red owl flew down to Cassidy and declared, “We cannot trust you just yet so we shall give you a test. If you succeed we shall give you the cure you need”.

 

- Cassidy and the Owl test By RBL, made Oct 16th, 2021 

The red owl flew out of the tree and came back with a huge piece of fish. The red owl gave the fish to Cassidy and when he did, the green owl and the blue owl flew onto two different trees. “I’ve flown these winds for as long as I’ve lived. Over time my wings have become slower and harder to use. Please give me that fish so my wings will feel good as new.” The owl in green suggested. Then the owl in blue harshly demanded, “I’m the fastest owl in these trees, not even that owl on the left could surpass me. I must stay the fastest, and with that fish I’d fly as far as the mountain in an instant.” After hearing the owls' cases Cassidy made a decision. “I shall give this fish to the Owl on the left, he needs it more than the other so he can fly once again.” “Correct,” the red one declared. “Now that you have passed our test, we shall give you the treatment to cure your mother’s sickness.” The Owl with red feathers gave Cassidy a small wooden bottle containing the fluid needed to make her strong once again. “Thank you wise Owls, I shall bring it to my mother so she’ll have strength once again.” Cassidy then went back through the forest so he could bring the medicine to Vixen.


While Cassidy was on his way back to his pack, Ellis went to the polar bear igloo. When Ellis got there she told them harshly, “Hey polar bears I’m looking for medicine for my sick mother, give me some now before she's gone for good or I will steal all your food so you will rot away from starvation!” The polar bears were shocked by the disrespect Ellis had shown them. Then Pola, the biggest and strongest of polar bears, walked up to Ellis and said, “ We won’t let anyone come into the Igloo and show us such disrespect.” They then pounced on Ellis for her actions. She shrieked so loud that even the birds could hear her from the top of the mountain peaks.

When Cassidy returned to the pack, he was commemorated for giving Vixen the medicine and showing the skills needed to conquer the tasks that the owls gave him. The polar bears later brought Ellis back home and explained why she was injured. After that Ellis was in the den for months on end trying to heal from her mistakes. Cassidy became the newest pack leader and remained the pride of the pack for many years to come.


Moral: Always treat people with kindness and respect, you never know what the consequences could be.

The Biggest arthropod By RBL

The biggest arthropod - The spider crab

                                

For this action project I decided to research the the very creepy Spider crab. 

In Binomial Nomenclature, the spider crab is seen as the Macrocheira kaempferi. I wanted to chose this organism because of it's long legs and because I thought it looked like something that didn't even exist. When I found out that I did still exist I wanted to go straight into researching it. I also wanted to research it because I felt like it looked really unique and I thought it would be good for looking at its taxonomy, morphology, and other unique traits.

 

From my first research I learned that majority of spider crabs live on different Japanese coasts. Under the water most often inhabit the sandy and rocky bottom of the continental shelf and slope and live in the shallow waters as babies and go down to 150 - 600 meters deep as adults. Their diet consists of dead animals and sea plants. Most spider crabs spend their days searching the ocean floors for food and since they can’t swim this process might take a while for them to find it. 

Here's a chart I created to mark all of the spider crab's taxonomy and what traits are needed for an organism to be in each category:

Label	Taxonomy	Morphology
1	Kingdom = Animalia	This spider crab is a part of the animalia because it is multicellular, eukaryotic and without chlorophyll.
2	Phylum = Malacostraca	The spider crab is a malacostraca because it has a lot of legs and a lot of long body parts making it very unique.
3	Class = Decapoda	The Spider crab has a head, thorax, and abdomen that makes it a part of the decapoda class.
4	Order = Inachidae	The Spider crab is made up of the Inachidae crab family and contains 39 genres of crab families.
5	Family = Macrocheira	The spider crab is Macrocheira because of its huge legs and smaller claws and because of how deep it lives in the ocean.
6	Genus = Hyas	Hyas is a genus of a spider crab because of it’s long legs and pie shaped face
7	kaempferi	The spider crab is a Macrocheira kaempferi because of its specific body temperatures living at around the surface where the water is more shallow at depths at 50 meters.  When they get older they move deeper into the ocean to where it can be 300 meters deep.

 After looking up each of these levels of taxonomy I began a outline that I could use to create an bigger exhibit of the spider crab.  

From there I went on the make it into a full exhibit: 

                             

In this exhibit I manage to analyze each taxonomic trait that I put on my outline above. I did get to all of the taxonomic traits but some of them like the class and genus were both really hard for me to analyze.

Organism differences: Spider Crab and Tiger

The spider crab is similar to a tiger because they are both a part of the kingdom animalia. That means that there are both living organisms and they both are multicellular, eukaryotic and without chlorophyll. They also share similar colors in shell and in fur since both are an orange shade. Even though this is true, there’s way more differences between the spider crab and the tiger. For starters the spider crab is an omnivore so they usually eat things like dead animals and sea plants. While the tiger is only a carnivore and only eats different kinds of meat. Another example is class groups and families. The spider crab is a part of the malacostraca class, meaning that it has three main body parts. Those being the head thorax, and abdomen. The difference being with the tiger is that it's a part of the mammalia or mammals class. This means that tigers have 3 middle ear bones, hair, and the production of milk that make the tiger a mammal . There are also a part of different families of organisms as well. spider crab is also part of the inachidae family, but the tiger is a part of the felidae family.  With that we can see that these organisms have way more differences than similarities.   

Heres a ven diagram that compares the two from each other:

Here are some mathematical sets that relate to the spider crab:

Final thoughts:

This action project was related to my class population because we learned a lot about taxonomy and how to categorize different organisms from each other. We also got to go to the Lincoln park zoo where we also got to learn about the behaviors of chimpanzees and I also looked at the different behaviors of a spider crab in my action project as well. From this experience I learned that there are a lot of different organisms in the world and there are many different ways to classify,categorize, and compare them to one another. Thank you for viewing my blog and have a wonderful day.

Sources: 

• Japanese spider crab, facts and photos. Animals. (n.d.). Retrieved October 4, 2021           https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/facts/japanese-spider-crab. 

• Hudson, C. (n.d.). What is a spider crab? All Things Nature. Retrieved October 4, 2021

            https://www.allthingsnature.org/what-is-a-spider-crab.htm.

• Riebel, W. (n.d.). Macrocheira Kaempferi. Animal Diversity Web. Retrieved October 4, 2021, from https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Macrocheira_kaempferi/.

The Asylum's seeker's process

In The United States there’s always been a huge population of people that live inside of the country and that number is still rising to this day. There has also been a huge increase in the amount of people who are trying to immigrate to the United States from other countries. Because of this the government has decided to give these people different titles in order to see how and why they need to come to the U.S. There are three titles these people are usually given: refugee, asylum seeker, and migrant. In this paper, I will be looking at the population of immigrants that involves the most amount of people, the asylum seekers.


An asylum seeker is someone who is looking for refuge from an outside country because they might be in fear of being killed, or because their country is uninhabitable. The difference between being an asylum seeker and a refugee is that when you're a refugee, you can no longer return to your country and are seeking protection from the government for safety and seeking access to food, health care, and shelter. As an asylum seeker you're not really given any of those things because you haven’t been approved by the government. One important point is that all refugees begin as asylum seekers and have to go through the process of becoming refugees. You could also just say that a refugee is an approved asylum seeker.


Now let’s look at two steps that an asylum seeker must go through in order to become an approved refugee. One step I believe works and the other I believe needs to be improved. The step that I do like in this process is the interview portion where an officer comes to interview an asylum seeker. In the case of the asylum seeker they might feel worryful about this interview because they might not even know English and might not be sure how to answer some of the questions that the officer might bring to the interview. In a lot of cases, the asylum seeker can feel detained and at that point should begin to worry about being sent back to their country. After the interview two things can happen to the asylum seeker at this point. One being that their story gets heard by the officer and they get approved, or they could be seen as illegal and must be sent back to the country they came from. I do like this part about the asylum seeker process because it gives a person the opportunity to learn this person or group of people’s stories about why they came to the us. I also like it because compared to the I - 589 file it only takes half a year at most compared to the many years it can take someone to get back the 1 - 589 file.


The part that I don’t like about this process is the I - 589 file. If you don’t know what the I - 589 file because of how difficult it can be for asylum seekers to fill it out. The entire document is 16 pages long and it doesn’t help that the entire document is in english as well. Since this is the case this makes it extremely difficult for asylum seekers since most of them would not understand English at all. On top of that if they do have children they must be 21 or under to add their children into the document as well.


Now with these two steps I do feel like there are ways that both of these steps can be improved. With the first step being that it can take over 45 days to set up the initial interview. With that in mind, if the wait time for getting an interview would be reduced, that would help the asylum process a lot more because they wouldn’t have to wait for an officer to interview them. For the I - 589 file I feel like there are many different ways to improve the process for incoming asylum seekers. One of those being making the document again but in different languages making it easier for the asylum process because the asylum seekers would actually be able to understand the information on the document and be able to fill it out in the best possible way. In closing I do believe that the asylum process is the hardest process to get through for upcoming migrants.