Käyttäjän achen29 päiväkirja

I went on my walk after getting out of two content heavy classes, so it was nice to be able to take some time to decompress on a nature walk. I decided to go to Newton campus and walk around Edmands Park, which is the woods area by Keyes. I walked around for about 40 minutes and it was cloudy and cool out. It had just rained the day before so the ground was still a bit moist and muddy, which was a bit of an inconvenience for me but on my walk I thought about how helpful and useful the water is for the plants ability to grow and also to disperse gametes for those which need water to do so. Speaking of water, bryophyta are most abundant in damp forests and lay low to the ground which was confirmed by the prevalent amounts of moss I saw on my walk. It makes sense that the moss grows on trees and rocks near the ground because it is moist and dark. It was fascinating to look at the different mosses up close and see the differences in morphologies. For example, the tree-skirt moss and haircap moss had distinct differences. I also noted that the leafs of many of the plants visually appeared to have a sort of coating, which I know is the cuticle, which helps creates a watertight teal to prevent water loss for land plants. It was interesting that some plants like wintergreens and fortune's spindle, which are both angiosperms, seemed to have thicker, waxer, shinier cuticle than others. The polypodiopsida or seedless vascular plants that I found were ferns. I tried looking for the sori, however I didn't see it on either of the ferns I found. The gymnosperms I found were pines and yews which are both conifers and it was interesting to see the difference in needles of the two. The pine had more thin, narrow, and "flexible" needles while the yew had thicker, darker, waxier and more structured needles/leafs. Angiosperms are noted to be flowering plants (as opposed to gymnosperms) however many of the angiosperms I saw and found did not have any visible flowers. This could be due to the season and temperatures right now. The wood asters and pokeweeds were the only ones that had flowers or fruits and I found these on the edges of the wooded area where there was more sun, which could be why the angiosperms further in the forest did not have flowers or had flowers that appeared to be dead/stripped away.

For this week's nature walk I decided to walk around the reservoir and the woods up and around it. It felt much colder than my last nature walk as the sun was not visible at all under all the clouds and there was some wind. I walked around the area for a lot longer than I planned to—about an hour and a half—because for a while I couldn't find any fungi. There were squirrels and a lot chipmunks dashing around quickly and squealing. I was walking all around the woods, on the path and off the path to try to find some fascinating fungi and perhaps other organisms as well, however it took me a while to find a variety of fungi. They were a bit hard to spot because the ground was covered with so many fallen leaves and sticks and dirt. The fungi easily blended into their surroundings so I had to deliberately look around for them. It made me think that the reason that these fungi are brown, white, and green is so maybe so they can camouflage into their environment to not get eaten. I didn't find any "free" standing fungi that were growing on the ground away from trees, all the fungi that I found were either directly on fallen trees or at the base of living trees. This could suggest many things. Perhaps the fungi grow best near trees or the fungi and trees are in some sort of symbiotic relationship between the fungi and the tree or tree roots. The fungi on the fallen, dead trees could suggest that the fungi may be aiding in the decomposition of the tree and/or the fungi are gaining nutrients from the tree that it no longer needs. It was fascinating that many of the fungi looked similar, however they were different species. Because the species have morphological similarities, it suggests that using the morphological species concept would not be best for classifying species as based on these traits alone they could be grouped together as one species. I looked up a bit of information about lichens and found it very interesting how lichens are the product of fungi and algae working together, resulting in an organism that is different from the two separate components. It made me wonder how different species of lichen are classified. Is it by the type of fungi and algae that make up each? The most fascinating thing that I found was the yellow mass growing on a tree trunk. Evidently, it caught my eye with its bright yellow color and size, and the fact that it was growing on the trunk at a level significantly higher than the ground. Inaturalist suggested that it was chicken of the woods, however I'm not sure if that is correct. I wonder why it is so big and colorful.

I walked around the Houghton Garden and the two bodies of water (one a bigger pond and one a smaller stream). It was sunny outside, however in the garden, the foliage created shade so it felt cool and there was a slight breeze. There were many trees (like pine trees and Sawara False Cypress), larger rocks, and other plants in the area—very green, though the ground was covered with brown fallen leaves, dirt, and rocks. I walked around for about an hour total, mostly because I wanted to try to get a picture of some animals. When I walked around, I could hear a lot of different types of chirping which signified to me that there were birds and insects in the area. However, I was not able to get a picture of any of the birds quickly enough to get a clear, discernible image because it couldn't get close enough without them flying away. I also heard and saw multiple squirrels and chipmunks in the area as I walked around, but it was very difficult to get closer to them before they ran away. Luckily, I was able to get a picture of a chipmunk toward the very end of my walk after trying so many times. Also, I realized that one of the chirping noises, or more like squealing, that I heard was coming from the chipmunks because the one I took a picture of made a lot of noise as it was running away. I was excited to find some different organisms living near and in the pond and bodies of water but I was not able to find much. There were some small black, narrow fish in the smaller stream area but they would swim away before I could take a picture. I saw two different types of fungi and took pictures of both, however one type (which was a singular fungus that was much larger) couldn't be identified so I did not include it. Throughout the walk I noticed the biodiversity and was trying to think how alpha, beta, and gamma diversity would be determined. I have had to determine the alpha and beta diversity of an ecosystem before, however the areas had much lower species richness. In a given area, even small, it appeared that the species richness would be high and the beta diversity would be high as well. Estimating gamma diversity seems complicated. Overall, it was fun wandering around the area and going every which direction to try to explore the diverse area and the species within it as much as I could.