Just about anywhere you look in the natural sciences you'll find a cycle of some description. From cells to individuals to populations and beyond, cyclical patterns exist on every scale. The following collection of Web sites follows on this theme: The first site (
1) is an excellent, animated introduction to the cell cycle from Cells Alive! Users can also get a closer look at the stages of mitosis by following the links provided. The next site from the Center for Biological Timing contains a tutorial on chronobiology, the study of biological rhythms (
2). Visitors will find a thorough overview of the human clock and related concepts, with emphasis on our 24-hour sleep-wake cycle. Speaking of internal cycles, the next site contains an interesting article from BBC News, relating how a woman's choice of men may vary in accordance with her menstrual cycle (
3). The next site moves from internal to externally-evident cycles, namely the life cycle of the monarch butterfly. Monarch Watch provides a detailed description of the butterfly life cycle, from egg to larva to pupa to adult (
4). Perhaps not quite as appealing as the monarch butterfly, but nevertheless intriguing, Schistosoma flatworms have a complicated life cycle involving humans and a particular group of snails. The University of California-Los Angeles Institute of the Environment offers an illustrated explanation of this highly specialized life cycle (
5). The following site from Science New Online describes how global climate change is accelerating the annual life cycles of plants and animals around the world (
6). On the level of population, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County offers the familiar example of the Canada lynx and the hare -- the same example used by countless textbooks to demonstrate the cyclical nature of predator-prey dynamics (
7). And finally, Georgia State University provides a nicely simplified introduction to the energy cycle in living things, focusing on the transfer of energy from the sun to plants to animals (
8).
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