Niche Adaptations

Homework #3

For this assignment, I headed into Tilden Park and ambled down a trail that passed along a broad expanse of chaparral vegetation as well as directly through a moist evergreen forest. What I discovered in looking for observations was very interesting!

In the chaparral portion of the hike, anything green was much harder to come by. I ended up identifying a weed, a shrub, a flower, what I think was some fungus attached to a tree, and another particularly intriguing plant. Obviously, the first thing I noticed when reflecting on these observations was that there were no animals. Although I did see a few birds and some very skittish lizards, for the most part, there was nothing alive and mobile to be seen. I think this is most likely because I went out in the middle of the day, when the sun was fully out, so anything that might normally be roaming free in the very exposed region was seeking shelter in the shade. As far as adaptations of the things I did see, the most common trait was that they were all noticeably dry, but not dying. The shrub had very small leaves, as you mentioned, as well as the flower. The other two plants I observed, however, actually had very broad leaves, and one of them even had some fuzzy "hairs" growing on its leaves. Perhaps these large leaves are useful for storing water, or maybe they simply absorb as much sunlight as possible to contribute to their food production that way. The flaky green thing growing on some tree branches that I have listed as fungus was also extremely dry but seemed to still be thriving that way, which was very interesting to me, because usually stuff like that likes a very damp, dark environment. I'm really not sure what it is so I hope someone is able to identify it for me!

In the moist evergreen portion of the hike, on the other hand, it felt like life was all around me. (Or, more accurately, under every log!) I observed two types of insect, a mollusk, another fungus and a plant here as well. I thought it was interesting that although this area was heavily shaded (from the tall, leafy trees), everything still seemed to be hiding! In fact, this was the most interesting characteristic of the things I observed in this region. In the chaparral, even when I overturned logs and went prodding around, it was still completely dry underneath and there was nothing to be found. However, here in the moist forest, water seemed to be retained everywhere, and all the critters loved it. Even the creatures themselves seemed to be adapted to hold onto this water. Another thing I noticed was that everything here seemed more protected: the snail had a shell, the rollie pollies and beetles both had hard exo-skeletons, etc. I think this could be because, since there is more water around and more organisms can live here, in order to survive, they need more protection in order to remain competitive.

Overall, the two environments were very different, even though they were extremely close together. I definitely noticed how the organisms in each sector had adapted to carve our their unique niche in the beautiful park!

Publicado el febrero 22, 2013 12:38 MAÑANA por maeganblansett