Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Compare structural and organization characteristics of Porifera and CnidariaDescribe the progressive development of tissues and their relevance to animal complexity

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:

"The relationships between cnidarians such as corals and their symbiotic microbes, including algae, bacteria, and other microorganisms, are key to reef health. However, along with ocean warming, eutrophication threatens these relationships by overwhelming the algal symbionts with dissolved nutrients. Some cnidarians with symbionts, including certain jellyfish, are very tolerant of eutrophication, and understanding these host-symbiont units (holobionts) could provide insights for reef preservation. A recent study investigated nutrient cycling in the eutrophication-resistant upside-down jellyfish. Isotope labelling revealed that the jellyfish shared carbon and nitrogen from food with their algal symbionts, but the algae had very limited access to nitrogen dissolved in the water. According to DNA metabarcoding, symbiotic jellyfish had lower bacterial diversity than algae-depleted (aposymbiotic) jellyfish, and lower diversity was correlated with lower nitrogen assimilation..."

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

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:

"Coral reefs are especially sensitive to environmental changes, which is evident from mass “bleaching” events, where corals expel the microalgae living in their cells. Reefs have suffered during both climate change and oil contamination, and chemical remediation efforts can harm corals further. A recent study sought to evaluate the impacts of oil contamination and find potential alternatives to chemical dispersants. Using a mesocosm experiment with the fire coral Millepora alcicornis, which is sensitive to environmental changes, researchers constructed a realistic oil-spill scenario and compared the effects of a chemical dispersant, Corexit 9500, to those of bioremediators. They found that bioremediators – bacteria, filamentous fungi, and yeast – helped to mitigate the effects of the oil and maintain the integrity of the coral. In contrast, the chemical dispersant negatively affected host physiology and altered the coral-associated microbial community..."

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