Carrion Beetle | What's Wild

This edition of What's Wild is all about the American Carrion Beetle, one of the best bugs in the business when it comes to decomposition. We'll also be traveling to Clemson University, where entomologists are researching and identifying native insect species.   

Standards

• 3.L.5 The student will demonstrate an understanding of how the characteristics and changes in environments and habitats affect the diversity of organisms.
  • 3.L.5A The characteristics of an environment (including physical characteristics, temperature, availability of resources, or the kinds and numbers of organisms present) influence the diversity of organisms that live there. Organisms can survive only in...
    • 3.L.5A.2 Develop and use a food chain model to classify organisms as producers, consumers, and decomposers and to describe how organisms obtain energy.
• 4.L.5 The student will demonstrate an understanding of how the structural characteristics and traits of plants and animals allow them to survive, grow, and reproduce.
  • 4.L.5B Plants and animals have physical characteristics that allow them to receive information from the environment. Structural adaptations within groups of plants and animals allow them to better survive and reproduce.
    • 4.L.5B.3 Construct explanations for how structural adaptations (such as methods for defense, locomotion, obtaining resources, or camouflage) allow animals to survive in the environment.
• Life Science: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems
  • 5.L.4 The student will demonstrate an understanding of relationships among biotic and abiotic factors within terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
    • 5.L.4B All organisms need energy to live and grow. Energy is obtained from food. The role an organism serves in an ecosystem can be described by the way in which it gets its energy. Energy is transferred within an ecosystem as organisms produce, consum...
      • 5.L.4B.1 Analyze and interpret data to explain how organisms obtain their energy and classify an organisms as producers, consumers (including herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore), or decomposers (such as fungi and bacteria).
      • 5.L.4B.3 Construct explanations for how organisms interact with each other in an ecosystem (including predators and prey, and parasites and hosts).
• 7.EC.5 The student will demonstrate an understanding of how organisms interact with and respond to the biotic and abiotic components of their environments.
  • 7.EC.5B Organisms in all ecosystems interact with and depend up on each other. Organisms with similar needs compete for limited resources. Food webs and energy pyramids are models that demonstrate how energy is transferred within an ecosystem.
    • 7.EC.5B.1 Develop and use models to explain how organisms interact in a competitive or mutually beneficial relationship for food, shelter, or space (including competition, mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, and predator-prey relationships).