BTEC Assignment 2 - Classification Keys

Scenario: You are a zoo keeper at Paradise Wildlife Park. You have been asked to create a series of classification keys to enable your team to identify some unknown organisms that have arrived from South East Asia. You need to work quickly to ensure the safety of your team and the tourists, as some of the organisms could potentially be dangerous!

Pass:

• Choose 4 organisms from any land based ecosystem on Earth
• Construct a key for each organism to help identify it.
• Give one example key where each step is labelled to show how to use it to identify an organism.
• Give a brief statement stating whether the unknown organisms are a danger to the Park and it’s tourists.

Merit:

• Describe how your four chosen organisms interact in the wild.
• Give examples of how the decline of one of your organisms may affect the population, habitat, feeding cycles etc of another.
• How may the introduction of these organisms affect the other wildlife in Paradise Park?

Distinction:

• Using your keys show how each feature used for identification may have changed due to evolution.
• Explain and describe evolutionary factors that may have caused the changes.
• Link these ideas back to the basics of the gene code.