Kacie's+Second+Visit

For my free journal, I had decided to focus on the plant and animal life around and in Manoa Stream. Manoa Stream has a lot of the trees and plant life is abundant on one side of the stream compared to the other, which is lined with houses. I wonder if that is because one side is wilder and untamed plants making them just grow and grow and not be up kept while the other is more on the ‘domesticated’ side. I also noticed that there is a lot of ducks on one side of the stream compared to the other. They stay on the side with less vegetation, which doesn’t really make any sense to me because when researching, I had found that ducks tend to eat more of vegetation and insects. So I just didn’t understand why they would not rather stay on the side with more plants, which would ultimately lead to more bugs (because they would live near the plants). This lead me to think about how or do human disturbances have any effect on where the ducks live, because even though the one side has more vegetation, that is also the side in which more people are around, due to the trail and park right next to it. In my second visit I also noticed a strange white dove among all of the other ducks. I wonder if it was a sign of great natural selection, or maybe it just came from somewhere else, maybe there is a large population of white doves downstream. I wonder how the population would turn out if a white dove and regular duck mated and how that would affect all the future generations. Another question that came up, was how fit would this new generation of dove and duck be? I also notice that there are some very unusual fish that don’t seem native to the stream or even Hawaii. I don’t understand how they got into the stream but then again the stream is not a very secluded place, people could easily have access to it. Maybe it was like the wallaby incident in which people would put fish into the stream and then they ended up making their own specie in the stream or maybe it was a form of natural selection over years and generations. Another question that crossed my mind was how does the all the birds around the area obtain food? I was thinking that maybe it could be from the trees at the houses around the stream or from humans that go to the park. My last question was what would happen to the stream if all the vegetation left? What would the ducks and birds eat, because without any vegetation would they stay and possibly adapt or leave. If they leave then that would cause a huge domino effect on this ecosystem. Possibly causing a exponential growth rate within the fish population. We can only wait to see in the upcoming weeks how these questions will turn out.

Assigned Journal: Fish- In the stream there are a wide variety of fish ranging from those that are brown, those who have a bright colored line on their back, some that have shimmery or blue underbellies and few that have bright fluorescent yellow tails. Color wise, I think the fish that are brown are the most fit for this ecosystem, because with the abundant amount of predators around these fish can use any tactic to help make them camouflage better with the riverbed. I think that the fish with the bright colored line on their back, have shimmery or blue underbellies or have bright yellow tails help to better allow them to reproduce. It may make them less fit becomes it’ll make them more suppressible to predation, attracting more attention to themselves for their mates and predators.. I bet that the fish that are all brown are female because females don’t need to be extravagant so they tend to look more plain and uninteresting. When I comes to size, I think that the bigger the better, because the fish that are the biggest aren’t very big at all. This is because of the shallowness of the river. Also if they are big there is less chance of other fish trying to at them. Lastly, I also think that the fit fish are very fast to better escape the other predators out there including ducks, toads, stray cats, bigger fish and some birds. This would lead to the fish population changing over time. Causing the males to probably having less extravagant features to better disguise themselves from predators, or like the peacock they may thrive and grow great colored tails because the females would only reproduce with the great-colored-tailed males. Lastly, all the fish would get faster, but not much bigger because they can only get as big as their environment would let them. Since they live in a shallow area they would be able to get very big.

Big fish is at the deeper part of the riverbed while the smaller fish is in the shallower, more closer to the edge areas. Big fish may just eat the little fish, which would give them a reason to stay closer to the shore where many of he bigger rocks are. This will give them even more protection from bigger fish because they can hide under the rocks. Many non-native and unusual fish are in the river. Unlike the guppies they don’t swim or move a lot and look like bottom feeders. Maybe people throw certain fish into the river, allowing them to reproduce and create their own species in the river.

Ducks- Many ducks are spotted with either light feathers and dark streaks or dark feathers with light streaks. Their primary and secondary wing feathers are mainly red and white with parts of the edges being blue or green. At the top of their heads they have black feathers that looks like a line going down their neck. The females have brownish gray webbed feet and a dark bill. They are very vocal, always squawking. The males bright orange bills and feet. When they speak their voices are a lot lower and softer compared to that of the female ducks voice. They also tend to be a lot bigger with longer necks. Male ducks also tend to stay around the females, following them around like a mouse to cheese. It also seems like ducks like to stay clean or get food. They clean themselves because they are continually picking at their feathers with their bill. They also dunk their bills underwater, but stay more on the calmer areas of the stream where most of the fish is located. They also may do that to cool themselves off.

Plant Life-