In this activity, students construct a food web using string to show connections between species. By the end of this activity, students should be able to: describe relationships between ...
In this online PD session recorded on 19 November 2015, primary school teacher Candy Hart describes how she adapted resources from the Science Learning Hub to teach her year 7 and 8 students ...
Feeding relationships are often shown as simple food chains – in reality, these relationships are much more complex, and the term ‘food web’ more accurately shows the links between producers ...
Explore this interactive diagram to learn more about life in the sea. Click on the different labels to view short video clips or images about different parts of the marine ecosystem.
Poisons are substances that cause harm to organisms when sufficient quantities are absorbed, inhaled or ingested. A toxin is a poisonous substance produced within living cells or organisms ...
Adaptation is an evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes increasingly well suited to living in a particular habitat. It is not a quick process! Natural selection over many generations ...
Throughout human existence we have relied on the oceans – for food, as a waste dump, for recreation, for economic opportunities and so on. However, it’s not only our activities in the marine ...
All living things depend on one another to live. Animals eat plants and/or animals to survive. Food webs describe the feeding connections between organisms in an ecosystem. The three main groups ...
The life cycle of the monarch butterfly. Click on one of titles to find out more about each stage.
When is a fish not really a fish? When it’s a starfish! Starfish – pātangatanga – are the common names for a group of animals called sea stars. Sea stars are actually part of the phylum ...
Toxicity can be measured by the effect the substance has on an organism, a tissue or a cell. We know that individuals will respond differently to the same dose of a substance because of a number ...
Sea stars have many weird and wonderful adaptations - including some unusual internal systems. Click on any of the labels in this interactive to view short video clips or images to learn more.
Antarctica – a land of extremes Antarctica is the highest, whitest, driest, coldest and windiest continent on Earth. It’s so cold that creatures often retreat to the sea to warm up. Add 24 hours ...
Estuaries connect land and sea. They are partly enclosed bodies of water situated at the edge of the land – a mixture of freshwater from streams and rivers and saltwater from the sea. Estuaries ...
An ecosystem consists of all of the organisms living within an area and the interactions between them and the physical environment. All ecosystems, whether they are marine, freshwater or located ...
Microplastics are very small plastic particles generally less than 5 mm in size. There are significant levels of microplastics polluting the ocean, freshwater and land, and research is showing ...
Sea stars have many weird and wonderful adaptations including both sexual and asexual reproduction. Click on any of the labels in this interactive to view short video clips or images to learn ...
In this video Dr Miles Lamare, from the University of Otago, discusses the classification of starfish and the role that they play in the marine ecosystem. Point of interest Starfish is the common ...
In this activity, students build their own food web using images of organisms from the marine ecosystem. This activity can be done indoors on paper or outdoors on a tarmac surface using chalk. By ...
Mussels (including green-lipped mussels) are filter feeders – they process large volumes of the water they live in to obtain food. Filter feeding is a method of eating that is used by diverse ...
Green-lipped mussels are endemic to New Zealand. They make their home on rocks and solid surfaces around New Zealand’s coastline. Mussel life cycle During its life cycle, the green-lipped mussel ...
This interactive demonstrates bioaccumulation of marine toxins. It shows how toxins move through a marine food web.
Have you ever wanted to fly? To soar above valleys and mountains, cities and oceans, feeling the wind whipping against your face? Flight has fascinated humans for as long as we have looked ...
There are over 100 poisonous plants in New Zealand. As children grow up, they often come into contact with plants that have poisonous properties. However, children usually don’t eat enough of a ...
