Lab 2 Journal

Biology Lab 2 Journal
Scott Huang

-We kept the BioCube at the same location as before (half submerged in water, half in air, covered with branches) as we still believe that it serves as a good place to captures lots of different types of organisms. Also, it still looks well integrated with the pond and hasn’t moved since we last put it in.

-While looking through the BioCube this lab period, we still didn’t see any organisms move through it.

-This period, I heard much more birds around the area.

-Some birds actually flew on top of the trees in the vernal pool, though I couldn’t take any photos since there were still too far from where I was standing.

-I could hear many types of bird calls. Some were short and repeated a lot. Some lingered for a while.

-Also saw a duck/goose flying above our area but was really high into the sky.

-Also heard the sound of a plane pass by.

-Still heard some wind, though not as windy as before.

-Heard the sound of water flowing

-Heard some croaking of maybe a frog or fairy shrimp. Tried to find where the noise came from but couldn’t find it.

-Apparently (heard by Peg), the fairy shrimp do like to come out later in the day and will make tons of noise in the vernal pool. However, once you go close to the vernal pool, the fairy shrimp in that area will become quiet. As you walk down the vernal pool, the area you are nearest will become quiet while the other parts will still be loud. However, if you sit still for long enough, the fairy shrimp nearest you will start to make sound again.

-Still heard a mechanical roar in the distance.

-Heard the crunch of the hay below my feet as I walked / other people walked.

-Since I don’t have tall boots and I think there is more diversity of organisms on the other side of the vernal pool, I always need to find a place in the pool where the pool is less wide. That way I can more easily jump to the other side without getting wet. This area is usually closer to the forests than to the farm house. Though everytime I jump, I still get some water entering one of my boots (a pair of Timberlands that reach to the top of my ankles).

-This time, I was more careful with walking on top of the sheet hay, as I found out from last lab that as you walk towards the vernal pool, while it may look like there’s a solid area of ground with hay on top, as you stand longer on that area, you start sinking into some water. This caused for my feet to get more wet than I expected last lab. Thus, I always made sure that wherever I stood for long was far away enough from the pool.

-This time, I was much more focused on seeing the different species of plants and less worried about trying to find moving organisms.

-This time I could more easily see the small spiders running over the ground of hay. I tried to grab one and killed it by accident. It was about one sixth the size of my fingertip, making it really hard to take a clear picture of. Spiders still tried to burrow back into the hay once you got too close to them.

-Group tried digging through some of the vernal pool but mostly only found different types of spiders. Using the net mostly caught algae and detritus.

-Apparently the water spiders might be attracted to the color black, with one of our group members with black boots seeing spiders naturally come to her.

-Water was still pretty cold. There were still solid chunks of ice floating on top of some points of the vernal pool. This looked cool, as when you picked up the ice, there would also be lots of algae stuck to it.

-Saws some bulges within some of the stems of plants, with Peg told me that it was actually caused by insects / it was a disease (i think but I don’t entirely remember).

-Saw a weird nest-like structure on top of a plant, which could have possibly been the nest of a insect. Had lots of layers to it and had a pale-yellow color.

-While walking along the vernal pool, I got constantly pricked by the thorns that grew from some of the plants. It was very annoying trying to get those thorns unstuck to my clothes and made me jump over those specific plants as the day went on.

-This time, I paid much more attention to the quality of the images taken and tried to make sure most of the images were crisp.

-Using the white cardboard paper as a backdrop really helped with making clearer pictures. Before, my camera would constantly have its focus be on other plants in the background and not the plant that I had placed in the foreground.

-Sometimes, when I was too far away from the white piece of paper, I simply put my hand behind the plant, which also had the same effect of eliminating the focus on background items.

-Since it was a much warmer and less windy day than the previous lab, it was much easier to roam around the vernal pool and actually focus more on the environment and ecology, since its kinda hard to take good photos of plants when you are shivering. When I talk about roam, I actually could try to go into densely packed areas of tree branches to see if I could find more diversity within our ecosystem.

-Most of the diversity within our ecosystem comes from plants so far. I really do wish we could spot a tadpole/salamander during our next lab.

Posted on April 18, 2019 02:13 AM by syhuang syhuang

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