First+Visit+Journal

We visited the stream for the first time on Saturday, October 4th at 2:30 pm.

1) **Free-Journal portion**: Our area that we are working in is in Manoa stream by Longs. A canopy of leaves and branches covers the whole area. There is lots of plant life, though some of it looks invasive. The two banks have plants and large trees. There is a small current by where we are working. Small purple fruits have fallen and cover the ground with their purple juice. These fruits are plums. The trees and plants in the area all bend in the same northwesterly direction because of the wind, and the roots of the trees have grown very long. You can see that the roots are long because of the erosion from rainfall and water flow. The plant life that I notice are taro, small yellow flowers in bunches, ferns, and large trees. But I also notice some small trees, and some invasive species. The animal life that I notice are cockroaches, small fish, little white bugs, many mosquitoes, and birds. If you dig under the dirt, you can find more cockroaches, earth worms, and little white bugs that I cannot identify. The significant abiotic factors are the shade, little wind, some rainfall, the humidity, and the water flow. These are significant because it could affect how the plants and animals in the environment survive. I think that this is a good area to study because there is a good amount of plant and animal life present. It is very quiet and undisturbed in this part of the stream. But about 2 years ago, this stream overflowed and rose up to the street and flooded it. This could've affected what we found there when we visited the site. Some species could've been wiped out by the flood, so that we wouldn't be able to see them now. Even though the flood may have washed these species out, I think that there was enough time for new species to come and live in this environment. This place is a good place because there are a lot of species living there that are easy to catch. If they're still here, that means that no one has been catching them, which means that there is no human contact with this place. I also think that this is a good place to study because it is right near my house. So if I ever need to do anything in this stream, I already have prior knowledge of what kind of species are here, and what they do for this environment. This could come in handy for things like college projects, because while we were there, there was a few college students observing the area as well.

2) **Assigned Journal Entry**: Describe a predator-prey relationship you see evidence of (direct or indirect) in your eco-place.

A predator-prey relationship that is evident in my eco-place, is the relationship between the fish (guppies) and algae that live in my eco-place. This is a predator-prey relationship because the guppies eat the algae. In my eco-place, I see this relationship and it is indirect. I inferred that this was going on from the fact that there was little algae on the bottom of the rocks in the areas that I saw lots of fish. But in the area where there was a strong current and few fish, there was more algae. I also observed that the fish lived in the areas that there were many rocks, and few fish lived in areas with few rocks. On the left is a picture of the area that we dipped our container into. You would think that there would be algae growing on these rocks, but as you can see, there is not very much algae on these rocks. This is because all of the fish living in this one little area of the stream are eating all of the algae off of these rocks. The fish (guppies) are the predator, and the alga is the prey. Another idea that I thought of would be that the fish are eating the small creatures that live in the algae. Like maybe very tiny shrimp that live in and eat the algae. The fish could be eating the shrimps, and maybe if they eat all of the shrimp in their area, their next source of food would be the algae itself. In this case, the small shrimp would be the prey, and the fish would still be the predator. Since there is a small current in the area we were observing, you would think that there couldn't be algae growing on the rocks, but the algae could be growing on the backs of the rocks, on the parts that aren't getting directly hit by the current of the water. The algae doesn't grow on the tops of the rocks because when the current goes over the rocks, there is no calm space for the algae to grow. The algae grows on the under parts of the rocks where it still gets sunlight, because algae needs sunlight to grow since it’s still a plant that goes through photosynthesis. But there is not much under the rocks either because the fish (guppies) eat it all, which is called a predator-prey relationship.