Lindsey's+Journal

  __Fir s t Vi  sit:__ 1. In the stream, there are a lot of mosquitos because the water is still, and it is not a flowing stream of water. Even though the stream comes down from the mountains and the trail, and finally farther down, flows into the ocean, the water is not like a normal stream of flowing water in that the only time it will constantly flow is when there is heavy rain that pushes the water down. If there is not a lot of water or it hasn’t rained for a while, the water will just sit, and sitting water attracts mosquitos. Also, in the stream, there are crayfish, black, super miniature (like not even a centimeter long) tadpoles, frogs, and the occasional white duck with a bit of a red coloring on its head. Not only are the ducks in the water, but they also stay on the grass on the other side of the stream. Mainly, the ones (or only one) that I saw, were outside of the stream standing on the grass looking around at us, wondering what all the activity was that was going on in the stream. There are also a lot of weeds, grass, sleeping grass, California grass, mini (and very cute) sunflowers, and beautiful, purple flowers only growing in a little cluster on the other side of the little stream. So, in general, there is a lot of vegetation in the stream, and a lot of varieties of plants and flowers growing there. There are also animals that are known to reside in the stream, but were not present when we went: the occasional chicken roaming around, bees, mongooses, and of course, the wild pigs that sometime, when there is a big rainfall, come running down from the Aiea Loop Trail in the mountains into the stream. I have only seen the pigs a couple times while driving past the stream, but luckily, there weren’t any in the stream when we went, or that would have minimized our observation time in the stream. But, with the animals and insects that are rarely seen, there are the ones that are, and sometimes become a bother. For example, the millions of flies that buzz around your head or the birds that don’t usually cause a problem, but can sometimes get in the way when you are trying to concentrate. The abiotic factors in the stream are the stream’s heat, humidity, rocks, water, and amount of rainfall. When it becomes humid, the mosquitos become very annoying, and more appear, biting you and causing discomfort. With the rocks, if there are too many, it could restrict the already low stream of water and with the rainfall, if there is a limited amount of rainfall, the stream doesn’t really live up to its name of “stream.” This is a good place becomes the stream has a lot of vegetation and some of the water comes down from the mountains, making part of the stream water “pure mountain water.”

_ 2. A predator prey relationship in the stream that I observed, were the crayfish and tadpoles. The were many tadpoles scattered throughout the whole length of the stream, and they were barely even half a centimeter, making them vulnerable prey to any of the bigger fish in the stream water. The stream also contains a few crayfish, which are bigger fish than the tadpoles, so obviously they will prey on the tiny tadpoles swimming around in the stream. All it takes is for the crayfish to swim through a tadpole infested area with its mouth open, and the crayfish will easily have hundreds of tadpoles for lunch. The tadpoles seemed to only conjugate around certain places, so there would not be tadpoles occupying every available space in the stream, but only certain places closest to the vegetation, and not in the middle of the stream where anything can easily watch them from afar. And, also, in their little “groups,” there would be a whole load of them, like a huge family of tadpoles all staying together trying to stay alive in the crayfish infested world. The tadpoles have to learn to adapt to this environment where they are being used as food, so they can’t just live a happy life free of predation. Since there probably have been tadpoles living in the stream for a very long time now, due to the fact that there are always frogs present in Aiea and in the stream, the tadpoles have probably adapted in some way to having predators. Maybe, part of their adaptation is staying together in a group, so when they spot a predator like the crayfish coming, the tadpoles can “warn” each other. Also, when the tadpoles are close to the vegetation and stay in little grooves, like I observed, that helps them to stay out of the swimming range of the crayfish. The crayfish will probably only swim in a streamline motion, going straight, and not deviating from their path, so if the tadpoles stay in a little U shaped area off to the side of the stream, they have less of a chance of being spotted by anything that is bound to eat them and end their already short life. If the tadpoles also stay in a little off to the side spot that is fairly small, bigger fish that eat the tadpoles probably wont be able to fit in the spot, allowing the tadpoles to be safe in that little spot to grow up into more annoying frogs.

+++++ __Seco nd Vi<span style="color: rgb(18, 135, 31);">sit: __   <span style="font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(170, 24, 24);"> <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 80);">1. For this eco place, I have taken the role of “plant life observer.” For this role, I examined all the plant life in the stream; the flowers, the trees, the tree branches, the weeds, the different types of grass, the algae in the stream water, how healthy the grass appeared to be, how abundant in growth the plants were, where the plants grew, and the change in growth lengths from our first visit to this most recent visit. At the stream, I immediately noticed that the grass including the weeds and all the vegetation had grown twice its height since our last visit. Did the vegetation only grow more rapidly this past week because of all the rain we recently got in the past few days? The grass doesn’t come in contact with humans, so fertilization is not an option, therefore rain and water that is washed down from the mountains has contributed to the increase of the plant growth. How fast does the vegetation grow? Does the vegetation need a lot of sunlight? All these questions can be answered by the observations made by the preceding visits with notes on the grass length and the time span between this visit and the next visit. There were little flowers growing in the stream. For example, the mini, yellow sunflowers I described in the previous journal, and also the mini, purple flowers also described in my previous journal reflection. I observed that both of these flowers grew near the stream water and against the stream walls, but never in the middle of the stream where the majority of the weeds and vegetation are growing. Why is that? What is the explanation for why the flowers don’t grow in the middle of the stream? Is it because of the growing weeds that are overtaking the flowers and eventually killing any flower that attempts to cultivate near the weeds? Is it because the flowers need a lot of water, and being in the middle of the stream near a lot of vegetation means that the flowers have to share the nourishment with other plants? Is it also because when the flowers are near the edges of the stream (the edges being the rock wall and the stream water itself that flows through), the flowers can get more water? We also went to the other side of the stream (the stream is divided by a bridge; underneath the bridge is water and there is no vegetation or dry spots that enable people to walk across) and farther down, I noticed, for the first time in the stream water, algae was growing. On the side that we mainly spent our time, there is no algae that is growing in the water. The water is just muddy water with no plant life growing on it, but on the other side, there is algae growing. The alga is growing by the Pearl Harbor bound exit, which, as you walk down, vegetation is not present. Does the fact that a limited amount of vegetation around means that algae will cultivate? Does that area have a better climate to support the growth of algae? Is the water near that area of a different substance (maybe cleaner) allowing more algae growth? Mainly, why is the alga only growing on that side? The fact that the vegetation is limited as we get closer to that side of the stream also brings up another question: why is that? Can that side not support growth of vegetation? Is the water around there not ideal for vegetation? All these questions remain unanswered.<span style="color: rgb(215, 124, 9);">

<span style="font-size: 150%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif;">2. In the stream, there are many different types of fish that need to survive under many pressures of predation. For example, there are many tadpoles in the stream that want to survive to grow into healthy frogs, but there are also much bigger crayfish that can easily wipe out a whole load of tadpoles in one easy bite. So these tadpoles not only have to know how to make a fast exit, but also know how to survive. To help each tadpole along in its journey of survival, they all have traits that have been passed down through adaptations made by their parents that would better their survival in the stream (heritable variation) against all their predators, including the crayfish. Something I noticed that the tadpoles had acquired was the length of their tails. Their tail length would help determine whether they had the ability to swim away fast enough from their predators. The longer the tail, the better their chance of survival was because their tail can help them swim away. So, many of the tadpoles in the stream water, I noted, had quite long tails for a tadpole. These tails enable the tadpoles to swim away from their predators fast enough. I also observed that some tadpoles didn’t have as long of tails as most of the other tadpoles. These tadpoles probably don’t have the same agility as the other tadpoles to make a fast swim away from predators. With this being said, the tadpoles with the longer tails are more “fit,” and can better live in an environment filled with predators. I also noticed that when we went to the other side of the stream, there were frogs living in the stream water. These frogs were a surprise to me because I had not noticed them as I walked along. All of a sudden, something jumped, causing me to also jump and almost go into cardiac arrest. I didn’t notice this frog because of its color. The frog (and frogs, there were two) was the exact same color as the stream water and mud in the water, therefore camouflaging them, and making them less noticeable to any who passed by. From living in the stream, they have acquired the trait of color through their parents. Being the color of the mud and water means that any predators of frogs, like birds, that happen to fly down, wont be able to see the frogs because of their mud-like and water-like color that disguise them from the world, making them fit frogs that will better survive. The ducks in the stream are examples of a less fit species in the stream. Even though they live in a stream where predation is limited for ducks, they still can be easily hunted by the wild boars that occasionally run through the stream from the mountains. The WHITE ducks live in a stream surrounded by **<span style="color: rgb(61, 44, 11);">BROWN ** water and <span style="color: rgb(43, 192, 22);">**GREEN** grass. Any creature that is able to see can spot these ducks in an instant making them easy prey to catch. There are few ducks in the stream, is it because they’re so easy to spot, therefore they’re preyed on, and killed, winding down the number of ducks in the stream? But the fact that the ducks can fly, and their predators probably can’t, helps the ducks to get away from their predators easily. Do these two traits cancel each other out? Or is the fact that they’re so easily visible overrule any flying ability, allowing any predator to sneak up on the ducks and catch them before flying away is an option?

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<span style="color: rgb(19, 16, 16); font-size: 90%;">+++++ __<span style="font-size: 200%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(217, 23, 23);">Thir d Vi<span style="color: rgb(23, 166, 27);">sit: __ <span style="color: rgb(124, 12, 182);"><span style="color: rgb(124, 0, 255);"> <span style="font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(170, 24, 24);"><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 80);">      <span style="color: rgb(47, 228, 224);">  <span style="font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(170, 24, 24);"><span style="color: rgb(26, 179, 193);"> 1.     At my recent stream visit, I noticed that the vegetation, yet again, grew a lot. This, as I now know, is a result of a lot of rain. The last time we went to the stream, I noted that the vegetation had grown a lot, and I questioned if that was because of the increased rain that we had received that week. This past week, there was also a major storm that rushed through the stream, and caused the water levels to rise dramatically, higher than usual. So, as a result of this rain, the vegetation had grown so much that when you walked through it, you did not know how far down your shoe would sink, and if there was water silently waiting to surprise your foot. From the knowledge of how the grass grew a lot from my last visit after the downpour of rain, and how the grass shot up this time, also after rain, I can infer that this increase of height is because of heavy periods of rain we get. At this stream visit, I also saw two more ducks in the stream. In my past visits, I had never noticed four ducks; I had only seen two ducks. Where could these two additional ducks have come from? They didn’t look small or young enough to be considered newborns and have just been born. Maybe, though, there’s a small chance that that is the possibility because I surely would have noticed two extra ducks sitting around at another spot in the stream. And, it was only after this extremely hard rain that these ducks showed up. Did they come down from the mountains –the Aiea Loop Trail that the stream flows out of- in an effort to escape the overflow of water in the mountains? I can infer that, also from this rain, the ducks have come out for some reason or another. Could it be that these ducks like an increased amount of water therefore they reside in the mountains where most of the rain is caught? But, because of the overflow of water –too much water- they were forced to come down to a safer place that also had a lot of water? I did observe that the part of the stream that they seemed to congregate around and spend the most of their time in was the part of the stream that had a broad expansion of water –more water than most parts of the stream- and more space to swim around with a lot of vegetation to eat and crayfish swimming around. I also noticed that the area with a lot of tadpoles was an area with deeper water than most parts of the stream. Also, in this area, the tadpoles were at a more advanced stage of development than the other parts of the stream. Does the depth of the water really play a role in their development? There was also an abundance of tadpoles in the shadier part of the stream. Does that mean anything? Or was it just a coincidence due to the fact that this shady spot was in the same area as the deeper part of the stream?

If there is a big area of water with the right amount of resources, then the ducks will live in that area. If the water is deeper, then more tadpoles will live in that area, and be able to thrive in that area. If it is shadier, then there will be more tadpoles living in the area.

<span style="color: rgb(47, 228, 224);"> <span style="font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(170, 24, 24);"><span style="color: rgb(26, 179, 193);">     <span style="color: rgb(193, 41, 209);"> <span style="color: rgb(47, 228, 224);">  <span style="font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(170, 24, 24);"><span style="color: rgb(168, 26, 193);">2. <span style="display: block; font-size: 210%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; text-align: left; color: rgb(77, 255, 0);"> <span style="color: rgb(218, 245, 15);"><span style="color: rgb(19, 16, 16);"> ++++ +  <span style="display: block; font-size: 210%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; text-align: left; color: rgb(77, 255, 0);">  <span style="font-size: 210%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(77, 255, 0);">__<span style="color: rgb(213, 21, 21);">Four <span style="color: rgb(202, 217, 69);">th Vi <span style="color: rgb(48, 171, 3);">sit: __  <span style="display: block; font-size: 210%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; text-align: left; color: rgb(77, 255, 0);"> <span style="font-size: 140%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(54, 206, 68);">1. For my experiment, I walked through the stream, and looked at the different areas of water throughout the stream. This stream doesn’t have a constant flow of water; there are different parts of the stream with different levels of water, yet, somehow the water all seems to connect with each other to flow down to Pearl Harbor. So, I walked along the stream, and each time that there was one distinct area of water, I stopped and examined it. Then, I walked along to another distinct area of the stream with water, and observed that. Basically, Aiea Stream is a stream filled with vegetation, and throughout the vegetation, there are different bodies of water that fill up the spots with less vegetation. Those areas have different heights of water even though they’re all connected. I noticed that only one area -of all those areas- had ducks, four of them, to be exact. I wanted to know why only one area of the whole stream had ducks; what was so special about that one part? So, I thought about it, and came up with the hypothesis: if there is a greater expansion of deep water, then more ducks will be living in it. Basically, I just walked around the stream and looked at each area’s depth and expansion. And from that, I concluded that the area with a lot of area to swim and great depth would attract the ducks. [deep, about a 4 food radius of water] ||= Area #2 [shallow, about 5 foot radius of water] ||= Area #3 [deep, about 20 food radius of water] ||= Area #4 [shallow, about15 foot radius of water] ||= Area #5 [shallow, biggest area of water there] || So, this data shows that even if the water is deep, but there is not a lot of room to swim around in, then the ducks won't like that area. And, if the area is huge with a lot of space to swim around, but it's not deep enough, the ducks also won't like it in there. <span style="display: block; font-size: 220%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(77, 255, 0); text-align: left;"><span style="color: rgb(71, 194, 187);"><span style="color: rgb(77, 37, 177);"> <span style="font-size: 80%; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> <span style="display: block; font-size: 220%; font-family: Impact,Charcoal,sans-serif; color: rgb(77, 255, 0); text-align: left;"> <span style="color: rgb(236, 137, 216);">2.
 * = Area #1
 * = 0 ||= 0 ||= 4 ||= 0 ||= 0 ||

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