BCC Bioscience Image Library is a media file repository of images and video clips made available to educators and students in the biological sciences. The resources are created by faculty, staff and students of Berkshire Community College and are licensed under Creative Commons 0. This means all content is free, with no restrictions on how the material may be used, reused, adapted or modified for any purposes, without restriction under copyright or database law.

This project was partially funded by a $20,000,000 grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration, Grant # TC-26450-14-60-A-25. The product was created by the grantee and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Labor. The U.S. Department of Labor makes no guarantees, warranties, or assurances of any kind, express or implied, with respect to such information, including any information on linked sites and including, but not limited to, accuracy of the information or its completeness, timeliness, usefulness, adequacy, continued availability, or ownership.

If you have any questions contact professor Faye Reynolds at: freynold@berkshirecc.edu

In this biodiversity activity, students learn how to construct their own dichotomous keys. They use either specimens they've collected or ones you bring into class, such as shells, fruit, or leaves. The one-page printable PDF includes guidelines about what students should look for and include when creating their dichotomous keys.

Word Count: 5326

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

Short Description:
History and Science of Cultivated Plants narrates how humans transitioned from foragers to farmers and have arrived at present-day industrial agriculture-based civilization. It entails myths, historical accounts, and scientific concepts to describe how human efforts have shaped and produced easier to grow, larger, tastier, and more nutritious fruits, vegetables, and grains from wild plants. Using examples of various economically and socially important crops central to human civilization, the book describes the origin of crop plants, the evolution of agricultural practices, fundamental concepts of natural selection vs. domestication, experimental and methodical plant breeding, and plant biotechnology. Data dashboard

Word Count: 48729

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)

How can a tree grow in the middle of a field if no one planted it there? In this lesson, students will work to find out the answer to this question by learning how seeds are dispersed. Students will observe different types of seeds and see how they sometimes "hitch a ride" in or on animals to travel great distances. Finally, they will use the engineering design process to make models of animals that help disperse seeds. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

A simple guide to the creation of honey and resources for how the student can help the Honey bee

“You shouldn’t make decisions when you’re hungry.” Tell that to the cell that ate a bacterium 1.5 billion years ago and set in motion the evolution of all plants on Earth. In this episode of Crash Course Botany, we’ll explore how plants came to exist, the forces that drive plant evolution, and how we know what Earth’s prehistoric dystopia was like before plants came along.

Chapters:
A World Without Plants
Plants' Origin Story
Defining Evolution
The Five Forces of Evolution
Studying Plant Evolution
Plants' Evolutionary History
Review & Credits
Credits

Humans make stuff up—including the names and classifications of living things. But those categories are still useful. In this episode of Crash Course Botany, we’ll explore how taxonomy and systematics help us understand what plants are and where they come from. We’ll discuss the power of naming, and why even scientists don’t agree on what a species is.

Chapters:
Categorizing Plants
What Is a Plant?
Taxonomy & Systematics
Indigenous Taxonomic Knowledge
Species Concepts
Review & Credits
Credits

In this lesson, the students will learn that plants need water, air, nutrients, and sunlight to grow. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA. **This lesson can be taught over a three to five day period. Simply repeat the steps as the students will become more knowledgeable of the target.

This is an activity where students learn about inquiry by designing an experiment on bean plants with the goal of growing the tallest plant. Students work in groups to plan the growing conditions of the control and three experimental plants. Students collect data for about three weeks and analyze their data to see if their hypothesis is correct or not. The end product can be a report presented in a number of ways.

From the driest deserts to the lushest forests, ecosystems are networks of life where organisms and the environment interact. In this episode of Crash Course Botany, we’ll explore how plants function as the foundations of these systems, without which no other life on Earth would be possible.

Chapters:
The Foundations of Ecosystems
Autotrophs
Heterotrophs
Food Webs
Protecting Wild Tomatoes
Keystone Species
Review & Credits
Credits

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Chloroplasts harness sunlight to power all the processes that help plants grow. Like engines, they must carefully balance their fuel to run efficiently. In plants, that’s the ratio of ATP to NADPH, two forms of fuel produced by photosynthesis. But scientists have long known that ATP/NADPH ratios in chloroplasts fall short of the value required for plants to turn CO₂ into sugars. To find out how plants overcome this imbalance, researchers tracked ATP in Arabidopsis plants in real time using a fluorescent protein sensor. They found that immature chloroplasts in young seedlings imported cytosolic ATP for chloroplast biogenesis, using an abundance of ATP transporter proteins to do the job, but mature chloroplasts downregulated these transporters to minimize ATP importation. Instead of importing ATP to maintain fuel balance, chloroplasts exported NADPH in the form of malate..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This article, part of Biodiversity Counts, provides insight into the important task of identifying plant specimens. The article includes a list of tools that are part of a botanist's field kit.

In this Biodiversity Counts article, students learn how to preserve their plant pressings.

In this Biodiversity Counts activity, students learn how to press and preserve plant specimens. The online page includes illustrated instructions about how to layer and maintain pressings until the specimens have dried.

This online article, from Biodiversity Counts, is a general-purpose tip sheet for using a dichotomous key. The article outlines a three step process using a tree as an example.

In this hands-on investigation, students will utilize the hydroponic method to grow a bean plant from a bean seed. Over the course of a 2 week time period, students will make detailed observations and sketches of the actual bean growth and make predictions about growth patterns over the weekend time periods. Students will create a cartoon to defend the position that plants obtain materials needed for growth primarily from air and water. This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.

Short Description:
This identification guide provides technical descriptions and photos for Ohio’s 21 invasive and noxious weed species. These descriptions include information on habitat, life cycle, key plant characteristics, and a summary of problematic features. Photos included in this guide present the weed species at different stages of maturity for optimal identification aid. This book also provides information on Ohio’s noxious seed law, extension guides to weed control, and a quick guide to weed regulations in Ohio law.

Word Count: 5862

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically as part of a bulk import process by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided. As a result, there may be errors in formatting.)

This activity is designed for students to discover how making observations of the environment is the key to making sound predictions. Students will also learn how both positive and negative outcomes of these predictions can affect and shape future decisions.

Short Description:
Return to milneopentextbooks.org to download PDF and other versions of this textNewParaInanimate Life is an open textbook covering a very traditional biological topic, botany, in a non-traditional way. Rather than a phylogenetic approach, going group by group, the book considers what defines organisms and examines four general areas of their biology: structure (size, shape, composition and how it comes to be); reproduction (including sex when present); energy and material needs, acquisition and manipulations; and finally their interactions with conditions and with other organisms including agricultural interactions between plants and people. Although much of the text is devoted to vascular plants, the book comparatively considers ‘EBA = everything but animals’ (hence the title): plants, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants (‘algae’, as well as some bacteria and archaebacteria), fungi, and ‘fungal-like’ organisms. The book includes brief ‘fact sheets’ of fifty-nine organisms/groups that biologists should be aware of, ranging from the very familiar (corn, yeast, pines) to the unfamiliar (cryptophytes, diatoms, late-blight of potato). These groups reflect the diversity of inanimate life.NewParaThis updated edition was published in July 2022 and includes corrections, revisions, additional figures, and fact-sheets for several more groups.

Long Description:
Inanimate Life is an open textbook covering a very traditional biological topic, botany, in a non-traditional way. Rather than a phylogenetic approach, going group by group, the book considers what defines organisms and examines four general areas of their biology: structure (size, shape, composition and how it comes to be); reproduction (including sex when present); energy and material needs, acquisition and manipulations; and finally their interactions with conditions and with other organisms including agricultural interactions between plants and people. Although much of the text is devoted to vascular plants, the book comparatively considers ‘EBA = everything but animals’ (hence the title): plants, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants (‘algae’, as well as some bacteria and archaebacteria), fungi, and ‘fungal-like’ organisms. The book includes brief ‘fact sheets’ of fifty-nine organisms/groups that biologists should be aware of, ranging from the very familiar (corn, yeast, pines) to the unfamiliar (cryptophytes, diatoms, late-blight of potato). These groups reflect the diversity of inanimate life. This updated edition was published in July 2022 and includes corrections, revisions, additional figures, and fact-sheets for several more groups.

Word Count: 177367

(Note: This resource's metadata has been created automatically by reformatting and/or combining the information that the author initially provided as part of a bulk import process.)