AlEEx's+Journal+on+Manoa+Stream

=**__ALEx Lam's JournaL__**=

**Journal #1**
Manoa stream is a damp area. There are high winds that travel through the stream. There is a lot of high, tall cow grass and many over grown weeds. There are a couple of Hala trees near by with naupaka and it is a very overgrown stream. The stream is very dirty and polluted. The water is a brownish color and there is trash flowing through it. There are some palm trees and the dead leaves have fallen into the stream. There are stones that have slid down from the hillside and landed in the stream and piled up. There are many ducks that seem to live close to the stream. They are in the stream looking for food by dipping their heads in the water. There are also crayfish living in the stream. They like the murky water and the brownish color helps them hide from predators. Fish also live in the stream. They are not very big and around an inch in size. They are fresh water guppies and it looks like they eat the algae and appear to be bottom feeders. The significant abiotic features in manoa stream are certainly the wind and rain. The wind makes for harsh conditions and allows for the plant seeds to be spread over very quickly. The rain creates moisture so that plants can thrive and repopulate. It also makes the soil softer and decomposes the land quicker, allowing the stones and dirt to slide into the stream. The rain also regulates how fast or strong the stream flows and how deep the water can get. If it tends to rain more there will be more water and a deeper stream than if it rains less. The pollution is also a factor with the stream. It is extremely dirty and the pollution does not help the animal species. It can affect the ducks but mistaking it for food or pollute the water and kill the fish. It is not a healthy factor in the stream and is affecting it in a negative way. Manoa stream will be a good place to study for the rest of the semester for a number of reasons. The fist being that it has both water and land habitats. We can study both animals from land and water in the same place. We can compare the differences we see from the land than from the water and see how both elements affect each other. The second reason is that there is a wide range of animal and plant live to observe. We have animals that thrive on the water and animals that live on land. There are many different species and many different types of plants. The third reason is that the conditions there can vary. It can be poring rain sometimes and others it could be completely sunny. We can observe the conditions and see how it affects the species living there.
 * 1.

2. The niche of the duck was the first niche I noticed. The duck lives some place off of the stream where it can nest and sleep. It has easy access to the stream. It swims in the deep areas where it cannot walk and doesn’t seem to have and predators in the water. It is the biggest thing that is occupying the stream it self and feeds off what lives in the water. It dives down to try and grab food in its beak. This is its main source of food in the water and it also cleans itself with the stream water. The flow of the stream is calm and it has no trouble moving through it. But when the rain comes it may have a harder time because of the change in the flow, making the stream current stronger. On land the duck may have predators such as the mongoose. It has a disadvantage on land unlike the advantages it has in the water. It is able to fly to escape predators but may be caught by surprise. The fresh water fish populate the waters of the stream. They are around the same color as the water and blend in very well. They feed off of the algae and other see weeds by scanning the stream floor. They have to fight the current of the stream because they are not big enough. They are constantly swimming up stream, at times not moving from the same spot. The fish have to watch out for the crayfish and ducks that are their predators. The ducks dive their heads into the water searching for these small fish to eat and the crayfish use their claws to rip apart the fish. Their protection is their color and blending in with their surroundings, as well as swimming away from predators. The crayfish also lived in the stream just like the freshwater fish. They are able to swim in the water as well as crawl. They get their food by using their claws and capturing small fish. They use them again to tear apart food and eat. They eat smaller fish and their predators are the fish that are of bigger size to them. The birds could also come down and pick them off as well. They use the murky water to hide them selves from predators and sneak up on prey. They use the mud to hide in as well and blend in well due to their color. The plants use the land to thrive. They hold the dirt together so that the land does not fall into the stream. They compact the soil and rocks with their roots and by doing this it prevents landslides and the stream from closing up. They get their nutrients from sun due to photosynthesis and get water from the stream. They also retrieve their water from the constant rain that falls in manoa, which keeps this thriving. There are many plants that have over takes the stream and just covered the entire land mass. They are in competition with each other for space and which species of plant will take over. They have not found a way to have their own niches so they are battling for control of one.**

**Journal #2**

 * Free journal entry**

__Observations:__

 * Manoa stream has a steady slow current for the most part. It is calm and the water is gentle. The weather was very nice today. It was warm and sunny. There was a nice breeze and it wasn’t raining at all. This had a lot to do with that slow current I believe because the weather determines the stream. If it is storming and the wiping winds the stream would be a lot faster and the current very strong. The current has a lot to do with how the fish behave in the stream. The stream gets more and more shallow as it continues down and the more shallow it gets the less fish there are. The fish seem to stay on the side of the stream in rocks and places where they can find protection. There are fresh water guppies found in the water. They are mostly a brown or bash color just like the dirt and water. They match very well with their surroundings although some of them do have a hint of silver, blue, or green. They stay in water where is has some depth so they are able to more through the stream with ease. The bigger fish seem to roam around more than the smaller fish and stay in areas of water that may be a little bit deeper. The smaller fish are usually found in shallower areas of water and stay with other smaller fish. They vary in sizes but the bigger guppies are usually found with the bigger guppies and the smaller guppies are usually found with the smaller guppies. They travel or stay in schools very close together. They tend to stay towards the edge of the stream off to the side. The side where there are rocks and plants, which provide more protection for them. It is harder for the predator to consume them when they are in tight areas that the predator has to work harder for them.**

__Questions:__
Why are the guppies the color they are now? Where they always this color? Why do they seem to occupy the side of the stream? What is their main food source? What is their biggest type of predator? Why are they constantly moving? It seems that there is no need, why not save energy? How does the weather affect their behavior and how they live? Do humans interfere with their lives? If so, which ways?
 * Why do they stay in schools?

Assigned journal Entry**

__Fish:__

 * The fresh water guppies are pressured into natural selection by the birds who feast on them, ducks, and crayfish. There have been traits that have been passed down due to natural selection that have both benefited and hurt the guppies. Their color is an advantageous trait because it helps them blend in with their surroundings. It allows them more protection from their predators because they are harder to see with the brown colored environment they live in. They occupy the side of the stream is another trait that benefits the fish because they do not have to expend energy fighting the currents. They have more protection towards the side of the stream with the rocks and small crevasses. They travel in schools. This is something that could both hurt and help them. They may be able to help protect each other when they are in more numbers but it also hurts them. They are all found in one spot very tightly packed together making it easy to pick off for birds and ducks. Their size is also something that can hurt them. They all vary in sizes but they are still very small. It allows them to live in the tight places of the stream, but it hurts them because they fall victim to bigger predators and cannot defend because of size.**

__Water Birds:__

 * The water birds have adapted their bodies so they can hunt for food easier. Their beak is a long and skinny tool for them. It is perfect for reaching into the water and still being able to keep their head out. It can shuffle through dirt and gravel to look for small creatures or can eat small fish. Its legs are very tall and skinny making it easy for the birds to stay above water and move through it quickly. It does not have anything holding it down in the water and the skinniness of the leg cuts through the water faster. Its wings also help it dive down with out being seen and catch the bird’s prey by surprise. The wings also keep it away from predators that threaten it on the ground. Such as mongoose or rats.**

__Ducks:__

 * The ducks have adapted and have traits that benefit from those adaptations. Its size keeps it form being threatened from anything in the stream. It is bigger and cannot be eaten by anything in the water. It does not have safety however, on land. Mongoose or rodents could pick it apart on land and the ducks size cannot help it there. Its form of movement in the water is good because of its webbed feed and how it floats above the water. This may hurt the duck though because it is very slow on land. It waddles and cannot out run its predators on land. It has a bill that is beneficial to the duck because it allows the duck to**

**Journal #3**
__Free Journal Entry:__ Hypothesis #1: If the weather continues to be harsh and rain heavily, than there will be more rocks in the stream and more erosion will occur. I could test this by comparing the amount of rocks there was today with the amount of rocks there is the next time I go to observe. The weather has been very rain and the conditions are perfect. It will rain again by the next visit and I can observe how the weather conditions affected the stream. Hypothesis #2: If it is deeper in once section of the stream, than the temperature of the water will be colder. If I can figure out which part of the stream is colder or the temperatures of each part of the stream, I can figure out what temperatures each organisms thrive in the best. I will pick different sections of the pond with different depths and then take the temperature of each section. This will tell me where it is colder or where it is warmer. Hypothesis #3: If the current of the water is stronger and the water movement is rougher, than the ducks will stay up stream where the water is calmer. I can test this hypothesis if it does not rain to harshly and the stream current lessens from this visit, next time. The current was pretty strong this time and I could see the ducks tended to stay up stream because the water was not as rough. This would tell me what conditions the ducks like and where they’re most comfortable.**
 * Manoa stream seems to be deeper than the last time I came to observe the steam. There is more water in the stream, probably because of the rain that has been consistently falling over the past couple days. The water up in Manoa is flowing through this stream and the current has also picked up. There is more water passing through faster now that I have ever observed, due to the heavy rain. The plant life if flourishing due to the great amount of water the plant life has been consuming. The plants on the far side of the stream also seem to have grown since the last time, where there was hardly anything on the other side. There are small rocks that must have drifted down and are not piled up in the shallow areas. The rain probably created such a heavy current that the water pushed so many rocks down stream to where they lie now. The ducks are tending to stay more up stream now because the water is calmer. It has more depth for them to swim in and they do not have to fight the current of the water flowing down. There are many more ducks than I had seen last time with a white duck I have never seen; yet they still continue to stay close together. The fish population seems to have lessened since the last visit and there are not nearly as many. I observed the same spot where they were all gathered and only could spot a couple guppies. Maybe due to the weather once again the fish have been swept down stream or the conditions were too harsh and they could not handle it.

__Assigned Journal Entry:**__

Food Web:

Visit #4:

__Free Journal Entry #4:__
Manoa Stream was back to its regular self, meaning there wasn’t any high current or more water flowing through then normal. There was hardly any rainfall and since there wasn’t a significant amount of rain like the last visit it did not affect the stream much. There were still ducks swimming or floating around but there was not as many as last time. I only saw two this visit, versus the last visit where there were many of them. It was odd because I had never seen the white duck the last visit and it was one of the two that I saw on this forth visit. The guppies were back to their normal resting spot, a little of to the side of the main flow of the stream. The water was more still there and not as deep as the other parts. The plants were a little more over grown since the first visit and I could tell because the weeds had gotten longer. The path that I take to go down to the stream was not as bushy and on this last visit I needed to push it out of the way to go through. The experiment I chose to do was the hypothesis based on the conditions. I need to change my hypothesis a little because of the conditions. The question I will be answering is: How do the conditions affect the stream and how? My hypothesis is: If the conditions continue to be rainy and windy, there will be more debris inside of the stream. The organisms will also be affected by the weather if it is harsh enough. The first thing I did was observed the stream right after the harsh conditions had passed and see how much of an affect the weather had on it. I took observations (visit 3) and observed how it had changed from the previous visits. The next step I took was to monitor the weather in between visits. I needed to observe the weather to see what conditions were going to affect Manoa stream. The step after that was to compare the observations to one another and see the differences. Then I would know that the rain and the wind conditions caused these changes. In conclusion the added depth of the stream and what seemed to be more water was due to the rainy conditions and how brutal the weather was in the third visit. The high currents were also from the rainfall last visit because the stream current has gone back to normal when the weather was clear. The rock that had fallen into the stream the last time were gone and the stream did not have any signs of erosion on this forth visit. This tells us that the wind and the rain cause more erosion and cause the stream to wear down. The erosion was caused when the conditions were very harsh and that is also another aspect that was affected because of the weather. The organisms were affect by the weather as well. The ducks were found more up stream on the third visit, yet they are back to their usual stop towards the middle of the stream. They are usually found here because the water is deep enough for them to swim in and the current is not too strong, it is at a pace that is comfortable there. The ducks were affected by the weather because due to the increase in water flow or current the ducks needed to stay more up stream. The current was not as strong there and that is where they could swim comfortably. The fish population was also more visible to me on this forth visit. On the third visit I hardly saw any guppies. This tells us once again that the weather affected the fish and may have swept them all the way down stream. Now that the weather has died down the guppies population is more visible.