Biological diversity is the key to the maintenance of the world as we know it. Life in a local site struck down by a passing storm springs back quickly: opportunistic species rush in to fill the spaces. They entrain the succession that circles back to something resembling the original state of the environment.
E.O. Wilson The Diversity of Life 1992
Lecture Downloads
Lecture
11: Spiders
All Chelicerates are predators. Find out how spiders and
their relatives eat and kill.
Lecture
15: More Protostomes
Finish insects and review the smaller arthropods, including
the Nematode worm lineage. Yet another worm ancestry to a
vast radiation.
Lecture
12: Crustaceans
Heavy armor, pincers, and stalked eyes. Crustaceans are successful aquatic arthropods. Plus Myriapoda: the millipedes and centipedes.
Lecture
16: Echinoderms
Returning to radial symmetry, seastars and urchins are among
the most bizarre animals.
Lecture
13: Video on Evolution
Extinctions are a natural part of the evolutionary process.
Mass extinctions can reshape entire ecosystems.
Lecture
14: Hexapods
The insects - without these tiny, enormously diverse animals,
life as we know it would cease to exist.
Lecture
18: Fishes
With teeth-lined jaws and powerful muscles, aquatic vertebrates
diversify. Two great radiations are seen: Cartilagenous Fishes
and Ray-finned Fishes.
