A frog is an Amphibian. An Amphibian can move feed and breathe on land and water. The frog is cold blooded which means the body temperatures changes with the temperature of its surroundings.

Aquatic invertebrates are animals such as insects, crustaceans and worms.

Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or for the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems. The biodiversity found on Earth today consists of many millions of distinct biological species, which is the product of nearly 3.5 billion years of evolution.

Biodiversity, the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem.

Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests are a temperate and humid biome. A typical structure of these forests includes four layers. The upper most layer is the canopy which is composed of tall mature trees. Below the canopy is the three-layered, shade tolerant understory.

The top layer of the understory is the sub-canopy which is composed of smaller mature trees, saplings, and suppressed juveniles canopy layer trees awaiting an opening in the canopy. Below the sub-canopy is the shrub layer, composed of low growing woody plants. Typically the lowest growing (and most diverse) layer is the ground cover or herbaceous layer.

A carnivore is an animal that eats only other animals.

An abbreviation for a cultivated variety produced by horticultural or agricultural techniques and not usually found in natural populations.

Diversity index, a measure of biodiversity of an ecosystem.

Natural environment, all living and non-living things that occur naturally on Earth.

A complex range of issues relating to access and availability of food including sustainable agriculture, sustainable soil management, reduction of dependence on fossil fuels, local food networks, localised economies, food storage and crop diversity.

Our Irish Frog is called the Common frog; the natural habitat for frogs is ponds and wetlands. Adult frogs are Carnivores.

Any process that alters the genetic material of living organism. This includes duplicating, deleting or inserting one or more new genes or altering the activities of an existing gene. It can be performed on microbes, plants or animals (humans included).

Having as wide as possible diversity of crops and seeds available for breeding and growing for future generations.

Germination is the process in which a seed emerges from a period of dormancy

A habitat is an ecological area that is inhabited by a particular animal or plant species and must provide the following for the animals that live in it, food, water, shelter, and space. An ecosystem is a community of plants, animals, and smaller organisms that live, feed, reproduce and interact in the same area or environment.

An Herbivore is an animal that only eats plants.

A home saved variety which people passed down from generation to generation, often linked to a story or piece of history or lore.

A crop variety that is produced by crossing two selected parent varieties which have usually been inbred to make them uniform. F1 hybrid plantscan combine the qualities of the parent lines and have hybrid vigour but seed collected from them does not.

Invertebrates are animals without a backbone.

A cultivar that has been selected by farmers, tribes people or even smallholders which has not been subject to intensive plant breeding and often associated with a geographical area. Landraces carry a greater number of variabilitiies in their genetic make up. Individual plants often differ in appearance, harvest time and disease resistance.

Landraces are grown from seeds which have not been systematically selected and marketed by seed companies or developed by plant breeders.

A natural fertilisation of 2 parent plants from the same variety will give open pollinated seed that breeds true to type and containing a genetic mix of each parent.

Open pollination is the key to seed saving. Plants that reproduce through natural means tend to adapt to local conditions over time, and evolve as reliable performers, particularly in their localities, known as landraces or “folk varieties”.

An Omnivore is an animal that eats both animals and plants.

Primary consumers are predatory animals that eat other animals Primary producers are plants that produce their own food/energy through the process of photosynthesis.

The most important area of forest in the world is the tropical rainforest. They are very dense, warm, wet places. Rain forests are considered to be the earth’s lungs as they absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide and give out oxygen during photosynthesis.

Large amounts of carbon dioxide are stored in the trees of a tropical rainforests, if these trees are cut down and burnt; the carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere, causing the green house effect. Rain forests occur in South Africa, West Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, Central America, and Australia.

Rain forests occur in a belt around the Equator of the world. There are approx 14 million species of animals and plants in the world and half of these live and grow in the rainforests.

These rainforests are considered the’ womb of life’ they are homes to a wide variety of Insects, Reptiles, Amphibians, Birds, and Mammals, it is almost always raining in the rainforests, rainforests can get over 2m of rain every year.

Here are some examples of hard wood that grow in the rainforests Mahogony, Teak, Rosewood, Okume. Other valuable resources that we harvest from the rainforests are coffee, nuts, rubber, sugarcane, and fruit. Over one quarter of our modern medicine originated in the rainforests.

The temperature in a rainforests is generally between 24 and 27 Celsius. It never freezes or gets too hot. It is almost always raining in the rainforests most of the rain falls during the monsoon between July and September.

In agriculture and gardening, seed saving is the practice of saving seeds or other reproductive material (e.g. tubers) from open-pollinated vegetables, grain, herbs, and flowers for use from year to year for annuals and nuts, tree fruits, and berries for perennials and trees.

This is the traditional way farms and gardens were maintained. In recent decades, there has been a major shift to purchasing seed annually from commercial seed suppliers, and to hybridized or cloned plants that do not produce seed that remains “true to type”-retaining the parent’s characteristics- from seed. Much of the grassroots seed-saving activity today is the work of home gardeners.

However, it is gaining popularity among organic farmers, permaculturists and enthusiasts with cultural or environmentalist interests.