m10.    What is the economic and medical importance of organisms?

About 90% of today's food crops were domesticated from wild tropical plants. Further, 75% of the world's population relies on plants or plant extracts for medicines. Animals are also studied. Elephants under stress are used to study heart disease and the nine-banded armadillo is used to study leprosy and to prepare a vaccine for it. Medical research without using animals includes use of tissue cultures, simulated tissues and body fluids, and bacteria, as well as computer modeling.

e10.    Why do organisms become extinct?  

e11.    What types of old-growth forests are there?

e22.    What do we eat?

g07.    How did plate tectonics affect the diversity of ecosystems?

g17.    Is some matter more useful than other matter?

g18.    What is energy?