Pond Water

In class last Thursday we got to look at pond water through a microscope. I thought it was super cool! There were so many little creatures and things to see in just one tiny drop. It kind of grosses me out that there is that much stuff in the water when I am swimming though. There were a lot of moving organisms but also a lot of algae and rocks. I saw a lot of filamentous green algae. That was easy to identify and looked really cool close up. The flatworm that I saw was really cool when it moved around because it was flat and then all of a sudden it was a weird long shape and then it would get flat again. The round worm was the grossest thing. It just slithered around and kept appearing. We kept trying to chase it around the slide. I also found this creature that looked like a little see-through crab. I looked it up and found out that it was most likely a water flea. The last organism that I identified was a green algae with flagella. It moved fast and looked kind of gross too.

Water fleas can live in a variety of places such as acidic swamps or freshwater lakes, ponds, rivers and streams. Their eggs are enclosed in a shell that protects them. Their life spans range from 5-6 months to 13-15 months. Water fleas eat mostly algae, protists and bacteria.

This is a picture of what my groups pond water looked like through the microscope.

Chain Factory

This activity was really fun and entertaining. I was the custodian (or lysosome) and had to pick up the little green pieces of crumpled up paper that represented energy. While the activity was going on I had no idea what we were doing it for. Once we found out we were representing a cell, it made more sense. Each person had a job that corresponded to a function of the cell. The "factory" that we were in was making chains to send to party stores, and the chains represented proteins that are made in the cell. It was really interesting how each thing really showed what the organelles in a cell do. Once we were done with the activity we got to discuss with our group what each job represented. If we would have just read about each function I think it would have been harder to understand what each of the processes were, but because we could relate them to something we had just physically done it was easier.

Project Blog 1

After writing your full proposal reflect here on what you think will happen, what you think your challenges will be, what you are concerned about, etc. 

In our project we are going to see how different plants affect the bacteria population in the soil they are living in. We are using sunflowers, grass, green beans, and radishes as our plants. I think that all of the plants will add bacteria, but in different amounts. I have read that legumes add a lot of bacteria, so I think the green bean soil will have the most. I am concerned that our plants aren't going to grow or something is going to happen to them, like someone else coming in and messing with them. I think those could also be our challenges. Another challenge could be the plants not getting enough or the same sunlight or water. I feel like we are going to have to be very careful about that. I think our project is going to go well. I am very excited to get started and see the amounts of bacteria and our plants grow. I hope that we get good results! 

Food Web

Last week in class we simulated a food web. We made a huge list of animals that live on Presque Isle and then each chose one single animal to research what it ate. We could only include animals that were on our list of ones that we chose, so there were only about 20. If we would have included all of the animals our food web would have been huge. Then, we each got a notecard and wrote the name of our animal on it with what it ate (of the things on our smaller list). I had a bat. Then we attached strings to the notecard for each organism that the animal ate. I only had one because I found that the only thing that Michigan bats eat on our list was hornets. Then we went outside and connected all of the strings.

As you can see, our web was a big, tangled mess. I learned that food webs are not nice and neat like food chains. But food webs are more accurate because a certain animal eats more than one thing. Then, we took one animal out of the food web. 

We found out that if that actually happened, none of the other animals would be able to survive. If one animal was taken out of the community, nothing else would be able to survive because everything relies on another animal to survive. The food web would collapse. I thought this was really interesting and eye opening. I had never thought about it like that. Each animal on Presque plays an important role in the community. 

New Celebration

Last night there was a lunar eclipse and I was lucky enough to see it. I was talking to my parents on the phone and had a perfect view of the moon rising into the sky. It was huge and my picture doesn't do it justice.

Picture- Katie Cattani

My friends and I headed down to McCarty's Cove a little after 8, right as the eclipse was starting. I made my boyfriend come instead of watching football games because I wanted as many people as possible to be able to see it. We got to watch the moon disappear and then turn reddish. It gradually got thinner and thinner but I could still see the outline of where it originally started. It was so cool.  I am really happy that I got to witness this eclipse. This experience was definitely a celebration. One of my friends, friends has a telescope and took some really cool pictures that she said I could also include in my blog. One of my other friends has a really nice camera and he also sent me pictures to use.

Pictures- Amanda Bink

Up and down photos: Trevor LaCombe 

Chernoff Faces

Last week we did an activity called Chernoff faces. One by one we were given a category and eventually had a face. First we had to get our face shape. A sideways oval meant you were from the lower peninsula, up and down oval for the upper peninsula and circle for anywhere else. Your major or minor determined your eye shape. Sideways oval for special education, up and down oval for science or math, or circle for language arts, social studies or anything else. Preferred sports determined the pupil. Sideways oval for individual sports, up and down oval for team sports or circle for X-games. Your preferred food determined your mouth. Sideways oval for Chinese foods, up and down oval for Mexican, or circle for Italian. Your ears were determined by your music preference. Sideways oval for rap or hip hop, up and down oval for rock or pop and circle for country. Finally, your nose was determined by your preference of pets. Sideways oval was a bird, up and down oval was a rodent or rabbit, and a circle was reptiles. These were my groups final products.

 After everyone in the class had their head, we classified ourselves into different groups. First, by face shape, or where we were from. Then we classified by mouth shape, or food preference. Finally we got into groups based on nose, or animal preference. From this activity I learned that sometimes we can classify things and people in many different groups. Some things don't belong in just one group, like our faces. We could have made even more groups. I don't think anyone in the class had the same face, which was cool.

Presque Isle Community Ecology

• Presque Isle is a great example of a community. A community is a smaller area in an ecosystem where living things interact. At Presque, an example of parasitism would be ticks. The ticks feed on animals and people and is benefited, but the organism it is feeding on is harmed but not killed. An example of commensalism would be a chickadee nesting in a tree. The tree is harmed, but the chickadee isn't harmed or benefitted. An example of mutualism would be deer eating grass. They are both benefitted! An example of intraspecific competition on Presque could be the deer. They are all competing for resources, and they all need the resources to survive. An example of interspecific competition wolves and foxes. They could fight for resources, habitat, or territory of the island. Presque would be considered a microhabitat because it is very different than the surrounding area. It is pretty much right in a city. The animals that live there probably don't spend much time in the city part of Marquette. The plants there are also pretty much only in that area. Marquette is a very nature filled town, but Presque Isle is the most diverse in a small area. 

• The niche of a  whitetail deer:

Deer are herbivores so they eat grasses, plants, and nuts. The live in forest areas and can get eaten by mountain lions, coyotes, and wolves. The females give birth to fawns, which are pictured in my photo that was taken in my backyard at home.