A Case Study on the American chestnut
A Walk in the Woods
1.Hypothesize: generate a hypothesis in reply to Mary’s questions. You do not have the full picture yet, but what do you predict you will find?
What exactly is a blight? Where do you think the blight that killed off the chestnut trees in eastern North America came from?
Why are some chestnuts still alive today? And why are they not as big as they once were decades ago?
Part III:
College Work Now that the first month or so of the fall semester was behind her Mary finally felt like she was settling in to a groove. Mary was enjoying the comradery of a community of peers all devoted to learning. She particularly enjoyed her general biology and introductory forestry courses. She was feeling a little anxious though, as she had to settle on a final research project for her biology course. Just yesterday her biology professor encouraged her students to begin their research with a question. “What are you curious about?” The professor asked. Mary thought for a moment. Then she remembered: chestnuts. She was determined to resolve the questions she had about the chestnut blightGenomic Selection for Blight ResistanceHypovirulence
1.Help Mary with her research project. Access the resources linked here. Sort the information regarding the origin and spread of the blight into a simple timeline.
2.Furthermore, illustrate the lifecycle of the blight.Draw a cyclical illustration of the blight infecting a chestnut. Begin with infection, cycle the illustration through the entire lifecycle of the blight as it impacts a chestnut tree, damages the tree, and re-infects other trees.
3.Now that you have illustrated the lifecycle of the chestnut blight and sketched a rudimentary timeline of the origin and spread of the blight in eastern North America, what kind of organism is the chestnut blight? Review your biology textbook and
the resources accessed in question one, above. Is the blight an animal? A plant?Fungi?Bacteria? Virus? Protist?
4.How did the blight get started? Where is it originally from and where did it spread outward from in the US?
