Bee Hive Project 5/25

EdCC keeps two bee hives in its northwest garden area. I had the opportunity to suit up and visit them last week and it was a fun and learning experience. First fun fact I learned is that bee suits aren't actually bee proof, they are bee resistant, so don't go in with too much false confidence if you go visit them. Next its that bee's don't like meat, so the next time a yellow and black insect lands on your food at a picnic it will most likely be a carnivorous wasp and not a bee. They eat bees too so they aren't friends.

There are two species of bees at EdCC, one is Italian and they are both being a bit slow in their build out of their honey comb, pollen gathering, and territory exploration according to their main keepers. The hives were newly started this winter and our professor, Gwen, has been recruited to help them develop into successful productive hives that can supply the culinary school with lots of locally produced honey.



This is one of the two bee hive huts located in the college's gardens. The bee's are building from the bottom most section up with their honey comb and the main entrance is the dark slit seen at the bottom.


A bee honey comb layer in the hive, this one is not built out very much at all and will hopefully receive more attention later in the summer when the top layer of the hive is developed.


This grate keeps the queen bee lower in the hive to build up the lower levels first. She is slightly larger in girth than the other bee casts and while they are free to move up and down the hive, she is restricted for now.


Bee Larva in the honey comb


The yellow objects attached to the bee's legs are the pollen from flowers nearby


A more built out section of honey comb with worker bees tending to it





This was a really interesting behavior to observe, the bees are chaining together to measure distance between the honey combs. They can keep uniform space between the combs using this method.

 

The queen been with her larger and longer abdomen. She is mobile and can fly, but generally stays in the hive busy with lots of work.





Bee suit protection. Remember to fully zip up your head piece


The experience was a lot of fun and interesting to see how busy the hives are. I recommend it for anyone who has never been up close to a bee hive to go and see it. The hive functions as a team and there is a lot of interesting literature and documentaries out there about their interactions.

For quick general read on bee hives: http://www.bbka.org.uk/learn/general_information/life_in_the_hive

No one was stung on my trip so any students that follow please keep the standard.

Ecosphere post by [Fun-Guys]_2

Members: Brian, Eunice, Thomas, Reylene

Compared to the previous weeks, theses are some notable changes that happened to our ecosphere:

• Green fluffy stuff covered the whole ecosphere
• Snail population increased
• Some part of the plant(Bacopa) wilted
• Much water evaporated
• Water color became green to clear.

Neither being a mold or moss, the unidentified green fluffy stuff prospered and finally covered the whole ecosphere. We expected that it would suffocate the organisms and kill everything, but surprisingly they were all doing well even something covering their body. The reason that some of the Bacopa plants wilted seem to be because of the snails eating them. Only the leave with holes wilted and others were doing fine. The cause of the wilting, the snail, actually asexually reproduced and became snails. We assumed that since the ecosphere has plenty of foods and no predators, it decided to share the goods with more of itself. Lastly, it was noticed that much of the water vaporized compared to the beginning, and the color of the water got clear again. just few weeks ago, the color of the water was over all green like it had a water bloom. Along with the unknown green stuff growing, the ecosphere seemed like it was not getting enough oxygen. However, despite the expectations, it survived and settled. Guess life is strong.

Figure 1. Green Fluffy stuff covering the whole plant. Only the parts eaten by snails wilted.

Figure 2. Baby snail.

Figure 3. Snail on the root of floating fern.

Figure 4. Overall ecosphere. Water actually cleared up.

Final Ecosphere Post by: Taylor Jones, Amy Latimer, Lisa Merritt, and Shauna Steele.

Ingredients of our ecosphere:

pond water

water and minerals 

gravel 

soil 

hay 

anabaena

sellenarium

shrimp 

daphnaea

plants: 1 water sprite

1 basopa

 Appearance  and growth difference

Group SALTS ecospehere plant life seems to be 

more dense and brush. This is due to the large 

amount of water sprite and barcopa that grew. 

Group SALT by far had the most plant life than 

the other groups. 

The daphnia in our ecosphere has also multiplied 

quite alot but because of how small it is it does 

not photgraph well.

We are actually quite pleased with the growth 

that our ecosphere has displayed and hope to keep

it after the course is over.

Here are some other pics of the progress of our 

ecosphere to compare from the first week until 

now.

                                       

Figure 1: Ecosphere on observation day: May 2, 2016

 

Figure 2: Observation day May 18, 2016. Definitely a 

substantial amount of plant growth.

Figure 3: A view of the ecosphere up close

Figure 4: An up close view of the other groups ecosphere so 

you can see the plant life difference.

THANKS FOR READING!

Ingredients of other group's ecosphere:
pond water
water and minerals
gravel
soil
hay
anabaena
daphnaea
1 water sprite
2 basopa
Ingredients added that are different:
euglena
volvox
snail








This group seem to have the same amount
of plant life but seems more sparsely
spaced just because the plant life that
grew in their ecosphere it a bigger leaf
type and ours seemd to grow more
needlelike plant life.

Final Ecosphere Post by Group [4.0 A]

Ecosphere Blog Post by John, Tony, Kyle, and Ali

Results:

In order to study biological science, we set up a controlled ecosphere experiment over a month ago. It thrived and lived for most of the part. The results were very interesting as they were both expected and unexpected. The observation of ecosphere every week allowed us to notice different results; thus, forcing us to hypothesize accordingly. Following are some of the findings that were observed:

• The growth of plant Bacopa thrived for the most part as expected. 
• Shrimp lived through the whole experiment. Although the initial hypothesis was that it will grow in size, but the growth was observed to be normal. 
• Green algae flourished prolifically which was a surprised result that was observed.
• Finally, the 20 count Daphnia that were included in the ecosphere on Day 1 did not survive through the experiment. Our initial hypothesis was that the Daphnia will grow in size but the actual results were very unexpected.

Observations from May 11:

Figure 1: Green algae can be observed in large quantities. 

Figure 2: Close up picture of green algae growth and two snails. Although the snails were not added to the ecosphere, but they were observed in the ecosphere. It was hypothesized that they were probably attached to the plant while setting up the experiment on Day 1.

Observations from May 13:

Figure 3: Compared to May 11 observations, this time the growth of green algae is relatively less. The reason is that the ecosphere was moved from the corner, where sunlight was not as abundant, to the middle of the row where there was a bit more sunlight. 

Observations from May 18:

Figure 4: Gametophytes of plant Bacopa.

Discussion:

We had initially added bacterium Anabaena to provide nitrogen fixation and inorganic nutrients for the plants. The fact that Bacopa plant shed their gametophytes is an indication that plants had good growth in the ecosphere. Nonetheless, the Bacopa plant that was sticking above the water portion had healthy internodes and leaves; whereas, the portion of the Bacopa plant below the water had somehow unhealthy look to it. It was hypothesized that green algae was competing with plant for oxygen and nutrients. In addition, Bacopa and green algae were hypothesized to be the food source for Shirmp and Daphnia. Although shrimp lived through  the experiment, Daphnias were dead in the second week. We hypothesized two things: First was that maybe Daphnia couldn't utilize the green algae very effectively as food source; thus, that is why they died. Secondly, we stated that maybe Daphnia were eaten up by shrimp because we couldn't see any trace of Daphnia, dead or alive, in the ecosphere. 

Our experiment set up was very similar with the group that included Taylor, Amy, Lisa, and Shawna. Although very similar set up, there are interesting differences between the two ecospheres. First of all, they don't have overly active green algae growth. Secondly, their Daphnia have survived through the experiment. One thing to be noticed though is that the shrimp in their experiment was dead in the initial stages. Therefore, maybe the reason their green algae didn't have the active growth was that because the Daphnia was there that utilized it as their food source.

References:

http://biol213-plants2.blogspot.com/2016/05/ecosphere-blog-post-bytaylor-jones-amy.html

Final Ecosphere Blog Post by REJ Group

ECOSPHERE BLOG POST BY GROUP REJ

Members: Jaena Bautista, Nhung Nguyen, Robert Barker

Intro

  We started this adventure of making our ecosphere a little over a month ago, there has been little change. The only main changes are; the water has dissipated as hoped for and our daphnia has grown to great abundance.

As we continue to observe our ecosphere, organisms carry on to survive. Here are some observations that show evidence of the ecosphere having enough nutrients to thrive, grow healthy and reproduce:

• Our snail got much bigger and healthier (as you can see from the Figure 2)
• Daphias reproduced a lot! It is most likely to fill the entire jar. But because of the very tiny size, we were not able to take a picture of it.
• Clean pond water
• Unknown organisms reproduce. One of our unidentified organisms is an aquatic worm which we talked about on our last Ecosphere blog.
• Our Bacopa Caroliniana grew in a healthy condition

Figure 2: Snail in our Ecosphere Figure 3: Bacopa Caroliniana

But on the last day of our observation, we identified a part of the Bacopa being decomposed and turning yellow. Here is a picture of it (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Unhealthy leaves of Bacopa

The only unhealthy (almost dead) organism in our ecosphere is the autotroph which is the Ceratopteris. As you can see from Figure 5 and 6, after one week, the plant has almost lost all of its leaves. The stems of our Ceratopteris also turned brown and looked very weak. Until now, we could not identify the reason why the plant became sick.

Figure 5 and 6: Our Ceratopteris with unhealthy stems and no leaf.

Comparison

From others that have done a very similar ecosphere, we have had the cleanest water. The group 4.0 [A] had a lot less soil and gravel, however; their water was more polluted. We think the reason for that is because they had added green algae.

Also, another group that caught our attention was the Dream Team. Our group were impressed by how lively and thriving their ecosphere was, especially their unusually huge Daphnia army was very fun to look at! Comparing to these giants, our Daphnia are just as tiny as dust particles, very hard to see with naked eyes, not to say they got smaller than the time we first introduced them to our ecosphere. We see this size difference as an interesting example of how nutrition affects the growth of organisms. As we looked through the Dream Team’s set-up, we found the key seemed to lie in their pond water/tap water plus nutrients combination and the wide variety of protists and bacteria they added into their ecosphere, which we believe would make up a highly abundant food source for the Daphnia to grow big and healthy.

References

http://biol213-plants2.blogspot.com/2016/05/ecospherepost-1.html

http://biol213-plants2.blogspot.com/2016/05/ecosphere-blog-post-by-dream-team.html

Final Post of Ecosphere by the Dream Team

By: Matthew Heinekin, Ivanna de Anda, Nhy Tran

Throughout several weeks of observing our ecosphere, it has been continued to thrive without any issues. The ecosphere has enough nutrients and food sources for all the organisms to live and reproduce. For instance, the Daphnia in our ecosphere continue to get bigger and reproduce many offsprings, and so does our snail (Figure 1)

 Figure 1. Close up on the ecosphere with big Daphnia and baby snails

From looking at the ingredients that [Fun-Guys] group used to make their own ecosphere, both ecosphere have very similar set-up. We both used pond water and algae nutrient water for the ecosphere. And we believe that this is the factor that lead both ecospheres grow and thrive. The pond water would have introduced a stable environment into the ecosphere and the added nutrients gave the organisms in the ecosphere more resources for them to be able to thrive. For instance, the snail in both of our ecospheres have grown bigger and reproduced a lot of baby snails (Figure 2). Since both groups don't have shrimp in the ecospheres, it shows that there were no predators that can eat our Daphnia. 

Figure 2. The baby snails are chilling on the side of the mason jar

Even though this is the last post of the ecosphere, we hope that you can still update and see our thriving ecosphere (huge Daphnia) during our lab time. 

Dream Team Research Project-Ecospheres

Ivanna, Matthew, Nhy, Nhung

For our research project, we are attempting to recreate our original ecosphere conditions, which resulted in exceptionally large Daphnia magna. We are replicating our original ecosphere in nine new different ecospheres, where the only variable we will be changing is the type of water in the system. In three of the ecospheres, there will be only pond water (approximately 2.7 liters), in three others there will be tap water (approx. 2.7 liters) and nutrients, and in the last three there will be a mixture of the pond water and the tap water + nutrients (adding up to approx. 2.7 liters). Already in our experiment, we have experienced some obstacles in attempting to recreate our original ecosphere as there was not enough resources to put two Bacota in each one or 20 daphnia, but regardless we have done our best to keep all variables the same in all ecospheres with the exception of the type of water. Over the next week or so, we will be monitoring the pH levels of the water in each of the ecospheres as well as oxygen levels and other elements we can test with a water testing kit. Below are pictures of some of our team members working on our ecospheres having the time of their lives.

Ecology project: The Effect of Varying Soil pH on the Rate of Tomato Plant Transpiration by: Taylor Jones, Amy Latimer, Lisa Merritt & Shauna Steele

To measure the effect of pH on transpiration, we will use 18 tomato plants as model organisms over a two week period. Each will be planted in the same soil, left in the same location, and watered the same amount at the same time. Three tomato plants will grow in unaltered potting soil, and Three tomato plants will grow in soil at different pH levels. The pH levels are as follows: three in strongly acidic conditions, three in moderately acidic conditions, three in strongly basic conditions, three in moderately basic conditions, three will be in neutral conditions, and three will be the control plants where the pH is not changed. In order to determine the rate of transpiration the plants will be checked twice a day and the weight and pH will be taken. Along with the weight and pH data observations about the plants condition will also be noted.

Objectives:

• To explore the process of transpiration
• To practice reading pH levels
• To explore the role of stomata in water loss
• To explore how minerals and water are transported from root to shoots
• To determine how transpiration (or lack thereof) can affect ecology short and/or long term

Hypothesis:

If plants are placed in a more basic soil, then the rate of transpiration will increase due to the the tendency of stomata to open up in less acidic environments.

Null hypothesis:

Soil pH has no effect on plant transpiration.

Prediction:

We predict that tomato plants in more basic soil will lose more water in more acidic soils.

Background Information & Significance:

When conditions are too hot, we get a little sweaty. Plants “sweat” as well. They lose water through their leaves, which is similar to how we lose water through our skin. The process of plants losing water is called transpiration. Transpiration is the loss of water via evaporation from the aerial parts (or parts completely exposed to air) of a plant. It takes place when two conditions are met: stomata (guard cells) are open and the air surrounding leaves is drier than the leaves inside. The stomata are located on the bottom of the leaves of plants which open and close in order for the plant to breathe in carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. Carbon dioxide is an essential molecule that is needed for plants for photosynthesis. When stomata open, water inside the plant is lost and evaporated into the air for us to breathe thus continuing the water cycle between air, plants and humans. Stomata regulate the process of transpiration in order to avoid the plant from losing too much water.

Transpiration is also important for plants because it helps with cooling them down in conditions that may be too hot for them. Plants need to cool down in order to avoid having their metabolic functions from slowing down which could lead to slow growth and flowering (or even stopping those processes altogether).  Transpiration also helps in moving water and changing the water pressure in plant cells which in turn help move minerals and nutrients up the plant from the roots to the leaves for photosynthesis. It’s pumping action helps move these needed materials against gravity with the help of (capillary) xylem water channels, the cohesion of water molecules, and the negative pressure that is caused by the transpiration process. This process is important especially when water is evaporating from the leaves of the plant. The significance of our experiment is that it provides proof of how certain growing practices can stunt plant growth or even pollute our soils that will hurt our plants or even our ecology on a large scale. This experiment will provide information on what conditions work best for plant transpiration which relates to how much the plants will grow and how we can sustain our soil pHs so that soils do not become acidic and pollute.

Progress:

On Monday the tomato plants were planted in approximately 300 grams of Black Gold potting soils. The control and neutral plants were put aside and will be allowed to grow without treatment. The initial pH of each plant was taken as well which most plants were at a pH of between ~5.5 and 6. Six of the plants were treated with Gypsum in order to make the pH more basic and six of the plants were treated with Limestone in order to lower the pH. After taking the pH's several time with a pH meter that was purchased no matter how much limestone and gysum was added the pH did not chage. Per advise from Gwen the team decided to wait until the next day and recheck the pH's in case a. it took time for the pH's to adjust or b. the pH meter was malfunctioning. After changing the pH meter that was obtained from the chemistry lab. On Wednesday the pH's were checked again and remained basic. At that time the formulas in order to change the pH were changed to vinegar in order to raise the pH and ammonia to lower the pH. On Thursday once in the morning and once in the afternoon the first reading of weight and pH were taken. (figure 1). Reading of pH and weight will be taken in the morning and the afternoon through May 25, 2016 except for Friday's and Weekends. The tomato plants will also be watered every couple days as needed with 3 sprays on the leaves and 3 sprays in the soil. All of the plants will have the same water at the same time, checked at the same time and access to the same amount of light as well We look forward to sharing our results with you!

Second Check of Ph and weight by: Lisa Merritt Date: 5/19/2016 am check @ 9:20 am

Pot #	Ph	Weight (g)	Observations
VA #1	5.93	355	Very good condition
VA#2	5.37	316	Was coming out of dirt, a little wilty. Added more soil
VA#3	5.68	341	Very good condition
MA#1	6.64	345	Wilty leaves @ the bottom
MA#2	6.65	358	Good condition
MA#3	6.93	392	Good condition
VB#1	7.68	311	Good condition
VB#2	7.59	321	Coming out of dirt. A little wilty pressed soil down
VB#3	7.42	368	Good condition
MB#1	7.30	441	Good condition
MB#2	7.36	436	Small relative to the others but good condition.
MB#3	7.77	354	One of the bigger plants. Very good condition
N#1	7.13	367	Tiny bit wilty @ top leaves.
N#2	7.03	355	Leaning and tiny wilt @the bottom
N#3	6.81	349	Leaning and leaves outside of the pot a bit wilty
C#1	6.42	451	One dead leaf @ the bottom
C#2	6.63	359	Leaning but good
C#3	6.11	319	Best one!

Figure 1: Data table of am pH and weight recordings on 5/19/2016

Image 2: Tomato plants on their first measuring day!

Image 1: Tomato plants on their planting day!