Biodomes in Spore

This post will go over Chugach science standards 9.10-9.15, these standards cover environmental adaptation that coincides with the evolution of life. Basically how the environment has affected the evolution of life, while in turn how life has affected the environment. To demonstrate this we’ll be using Spore, which you can find a guide here.

Lets start at the most basic level of ecological organization- the individual level. The word individual in an ecological standpoint represents a literal meaning of one living organism. You, the reader, are an example, I’m an example, any singular entity is considered an individual. The next level is population, population refer to a large grouping of individuals of the same species. Getting even larger, communities are defined as separate population living together in coexistence. This coexistence is often defined by a food web.

Moving up another level things become drastically more complex, ecosystems are defined as the interactions between communities and the environment. These interactions lead to evolutionary changes in the individuals who live in the ecosystem. Overtime the populations of species develop adaptations to the environment.  Which leads to the next level of ecological organization, biomes. Biomes are large areas with very similar environments with more than one ecosystem. The final level is the biosphere, the biosphere is the sum of all biomes living together on one planet, basically the biosphere is the earth.

Where do humans come into this? Well humans are currently affecting the biosphere on a level that no other species has done before. Humans have caused various biome changes, whether by bringing invasive species into area that over compete, or global pollution through combustion of materials.

Among these issues I’d like to bring up two, the first being pollution in the atmosphere that’s causing the global warming effect, heat is being trapped in the earth instead of being reflected back out. Moving forward. The second more interesting, in my opinion,  biome pollution caused by humans was the Chernobyl Disaster. The cause was a local nuclear power plant melting down. Irradiating the surrounding area and making it completely uninhabitable to humans, however recent animal life has grown accustomed to living in chernobyl and has established an ecosystem that seems to have adapted to the radiation.

For challenges we’ll be using Spore, basically the students will play through the game and reach the final stage, the exploration of space. At this point you explore different biospheres (planets), analyzing the flora and fauna

Challenges:

Space age of spore:

1. Find five different Biosphere’s
1. Fully explore the different biomes,
1. Once explored, note the key features of the biomes and then do a small write up on the potential evolutionary aspects of the flora and fauna related to the environment. Specifically why the flora and fauna has evolved.
2. in the five different biospheres, of the previous challenge, once you’ve explored the biomes write up a small paper on the possible adaptations that living organisms would have to make to survive there.

Tasks	Emerging	Developing	Proficient	Advanced
Exploring the biospheres of spore	Student explores only 2 biospheres with a very limited write up that roughly explains the biomes and doesn’t explain the potential evolutions of the flora and fauna.	Student fully explores only 4 of the biospheres, records the details of the biomes but fails to explain the evolutions of the flora and fauna,	Student fully explores all of the biospheres, records the details of the biomes and provides a modest explanation of the potential evolutionary path the flora and fauna took to survive in the biomes	Student explores more than five biospheres and records the details of each one, provides a very insightful and well reasoned, explaining the potential evolutionary paths for the flora and fauna.