Zhanna+McAtee

Role: Animals

**Zhanna's Assigned Journal Entries:**

October 6th:


 * A few of the animals' niches:**

Spiders: created their own niche of spider webs between leaves and occasionally twigs. They are usually about a foot off the ground. The spider webs are sticky and white. Usually they form small quadrilaterals pieced together to make one big shape of the entire web. I would hypothesize this is for support and it gives the spider more places to crawl/escape to if it is attacked from one side. The entire web seems to be about six inches wide for each 2 dimensional angle.

Ants: They crawl all over the floor. I was unable to find their ant hole, but they were all over the brownish-black rocks, the dark brown soil, the dead brown leaves on the floor and they even scuttled up some of the plants on occasion.

Fish: These animals were hard to find because they were so small and they were the same brown as the dirt on the bottom of their habitats. They seemed to favor living in the small pools that were sheltered from the moving water. The still water seemed to be easier to swim around in. When they sensed me coming they would dart to the edge of the pool and hide in the shadows of the rocks on the side, or they would dive under sunken leaves.

October 21st:

Something I noticed that most of the animals had in common were that they were all very tiny. Is this because there are no larger animals that eat them? The largest animal I could find so far was a dove, but it didn't get very close to where most of the insects seemed to be living. Even though ants and spiders would be the ones who would eat other insects, they were both some of the smallest insects there. That isn't an advantage to their hunting at all. Even the mosquitoes were scrawny. Is there a lot less competition around the stream? This is hard to believe since the stream seems to be so busy. All the animals, even the fish, seemed to be built for hiding rather then hunting. Is there one dominant creature at the stream that none of them could possibly beat, so instead of evolving to try to beat it, they hide instead because that results in less death? Or maybe is it because the stream is so plentiful there is more than enough resources for everyone? Or did they evolve to need less resources?

November 12th:

I believe there are environmental pressures that could be driving natural selection within the Makiki Stream. For instance, almost all the animals living at the Makiki Stream are an inch long or less. Maybe smaller bugs have to eat less because they weigh less and it takes less energy to move things that have less weight, and since energy is in food they don't need as much food. I believe the larger bugs who needed more food died out because there is not enough food to sustain large animals around the Makiki Stream. This means, only smaller animals survived at the Makiki Stream. The only animals I saw that were larger then an inch at the Makiki Stream were birds who can easily fly to get food somewhere other then the Makiki Stream, and there were not a lot of birds there anyways.

December 3rd: The Makiki Stream is very good toward the carbon cycle. There are hardly any animals, and the few animals there are small (ants, spiders, crayfish, the occasional bird, ect.), so not a lot of carbon is being expelled into the atmosphere as they breathe. There are, however, may, many bushes and trees and things with bright green leaves, which means they use a lot of carbon dioxide to photosynthesize during the day since the stream is always in a sunny area. The plants probably expel a lot of carbon dioxide during the night though, when the sun is down and they are going through cellular respiration. The stream must both absorb and expel carbon dioxide into the air. The water is always in motion.

**Zhanna's Free Journal Entries:**

October 6th:

Makiki Stream is an incredibly beautiful place. There is a convenient rock-covered pathway that leads to a man-made wood and chicken wire bridge over a shallow part of the stream, but other than that it gives off the illusion it has never been touched by human hands. The water is basically completely clear, other then eroded dirt and leaves and sticks floating down the water current. You can see all the way to the bottom of the stream with your bare human eyes. Sometimes when you first approach one of end the stream you will see little movements as your shadow hits the water. The fish that dart away at the approach of a human seem to not move until a few minutes after the human leaves again. They are very small and brown to camafouge with the dirt at the bottom of the stream, and it's hard to see most of the time so you have to be lucky to spot one. Something really cool about the stream is that most of it is constantly flowing water, but you can find tide-pool like areas formed by rocks that protects a small puddle of water, and those small ponds are made of completely still water. In those ponds, the water is a lot less clear and has more moss-type plants floating at the top and whatever falls into the area settles there, because there is nothing to move it out. For instance, on the bottom of the pools you could make out small rocks and sticks. The dirt seemed a lot lighter compared to the dirt outside of the water. There were brown leaves and brown moss-like plants floating on the surface. Also, rotten, brown kukui nuts were in the ponds too. There was a kukui nut tree above, so I expect they fell directly from the tree and there was no current to move them any further down the river, so the water soaked them through till their natural green color turned brown.

Another thing that made the stream very beautiful was that there were all kinds of plants surrounding the water and pathway on all sides. Small green vines were curling along the bottom of the bridge. What seemed to be bamboo was growing on the edge of the pathway and climbed up to make a tunnel above it. Many different vines and flowers hung from that greenery roof. I also saw taro-like plants growing at the edge of the water. There were pink periwinkles on one side of the river. Other green leaves of all shapes and sizes were on every side of me. When you look down the river, you couldn't see more then 20 feet or so, because long blades of grass and such grew over the river and blocked my view.

On the side of the path a lot of dark green and light green leaves protruded from a field of vegetation. They were all different shapes. Some even looked like banana leaves. Some were kind of creepy and looked like a hundred green hands were coming out of the ground to grab you. The plant sizes and heights varied too. Also, there were trees, but most of their bark was a grey color. Some of the leaves showed signs of being eaten around the edges, so I suspect there were some caterpillars or other leaf-eating bugs hiding in the depths of the plants. Also, between a few leaves were small, white spider webs, and tiny grey spiders in the middle of them.

Hundreds of mosquitos were buzzing around everywhere. There seemed to be at least two mosquitos on my skin at every moment. That's how many there were. When I caught one, I noticed that their bodies and legs were a lot thinner than other mosquitoes I ahev seen around the island. Also, after they bit me, the bites didn't itch as much, so it seemed as if they used less poison to extract blood. Also, small, quick-moving gnats were flying around too. I also saw a carpenter bee, which might be a source of pollination for some of the plants. A few doves were around but they didn't get too close to the stream or go below the bamboo. Tiny red ants were crawling over the ground. I found a mini orange, black and white moth or butterfly wing on the floor. I seemed to be torn and withering with age, so I wondered why I only found one wing. Maybe something tried to attack the butterfly/moth. If so, I wonder what did it.

The temperature of the area was kind of muggy and a little humid, but you couldn't really tell because the wind was so frequent and gentle. I am not sure what the exact temperature was, but I suspect it was in the high 70s or possibly the low 80s. Also, the sun was shining very brightly, but the leaves above us made it so that the area was lit, but I never had to squint or wear sunglasses or anything. It was perfect picnic weather!

The only sound I could hear was the sound of running water. If any animals were chirping or making other noises, they must have been drowned out by the stream.







One reason I think this is a great area to study for the semester is because it is so beautiful. I am deeply attracted to the Makiki Stream, and when I love to do something it usually turns out a lot better compared to when I do something without interest and half heartedly. Plus, the Makiki Stream is so busy. There are a whole bunch of different plants and animals and other factors that make up the area. I am sure every time we go we will discover something new. It's like uncovering nature's beautiful secrets. We will never run out of things to explore and make observations and inferences on.

October 21st:

All the plants were incredibly green and lush. However, some of the seemingly healthy leaves were torn and brown at all their edges. It was almost as if they were being eaten. Some leaves even had holes in the center. I would guess insects are behind these leaf damages, but I was unsuccessful at finding any bugs that would eat leaves. I hypothesize that I passed by a caterpillar of some sort, and it went by unseen. Also, I think there are different kinds of caterpillars living there, because not all the leaves were eaten the same way. Some leaves turned brown where they were bitten. Some where chewed from the edges and some had a hole munched through the center of them. This means that different bugs with different eating habits ate different leaves. The bugs are the predators and the leaves are the prey. I have yet to discover how the plants are forming a defense system against the bugs.

November 12th:

I got to the stream at 10:18 a.m. and I immediately noticed something was incredibly different about the stream bed. There were a LOT less mosquitoes flying around. It was a little more windy and colder too. But the most noticeable difference was the ground was a lot more clear and open in places. I thought I saw more dirt then I remembered from before. There were dead leaves everywhere. Then I looked across the stream. I remembered the periwinkles and searched for the pink flowers but realized they were gone! I looked closer to the water and realized that the taro-like plants were missing as well. That's when I realized there were signs of a weed whacker! Humans had done a little gardening. With this in mind I walked a little more up stream and saw that there was a huge pile of deal leaves and branches and such. It was almost as tall as me, and 10 feet wide.

So after I realized the stream was no longer self-sustaining, I scoped the place out a little more. I went upstream and noticed there were more bird droppings then there were downstream. I looked around me. Everything on the floor was brown and everything above it was green. There were no fruit in the trees except for Kukui nuts (which are green), and I saw a breadfruit tree, but I didn't see any actual breadfruit. I also saw a couple banana trees with no bananas or flowers. Even the moss on the rocks (which faced upstream-north) was green in color.

After noticing the lack of flowers, I wondered what was going on in the water. It was as clear as the last time I had been there, so i could see basically everything that was happening underwater. I saw a few tadpole-looking, grey fish that were no longer then a centimeter. After sitting and staring at the water for a while I also started to notice something sitting on the bottom of the stream. Crayfish! They were brown and had tails that looked like a bunch of tassels. They were each about an inch long and tended to cluster together to hang out on rocks at the bottom of the river. There were a lot of them hanging out in the still water, and when they swam it looked like they were floating gently from place to place.

When I was done observing the crayfish after 15 minutes or so, I noticed that the water level had decreased by about two inches. Leaves and sticks fell occasionally onto the surface of the water. I also saw dead bugs and gnats floating on the surface.

Last time, in my assigned journal entry on October 21st, I asked a few rhetorical questions about the animals living off the Makiki Stream. They were questions wondering why the animals there were so small. During my most recent visit, I studied the stream and decided that the most logical answer to why all the animals there are so small is lack of resources such as food. Birds hunt a lot of the insects living near the stream, but I don't see any defenses that the bugs have developed to ward off the birds. Instead, I believe the animals don't have the food to sustain them if they got much bigger. Previously I said that everything seemed to be either green or brown. There wasn't a lot of fruit, except for kukui nuts, which are not edible to most animal types. The only thing there to eat was leaves, but the ants and spiders and mosquitoes I saw did not seem to eat leaves. They seemed to eat either meat or fruit. There is not a lot of either of those two food groups so I believe food is hard to get around the Makiki Stream.

I also propose some simple hypothesis to test if the bugs are small from lack of food.

If I leave a fruit such as an orange or pear near the Makiki Stream, then the bugs will eat it, because some of the bugs eat fruit to survive. The reason I want to make sure some of the bugs eat fruit is because there is not a lot of fruit near the river, which means there would be at a lack of food, which is a possible reason the bugs living at the river are so small.

If I leave a pile of dead bugs such as dead ants or small cockroaches near the Makiki Stream, then the other live bugs will eat the dead bugs, because they eat other bugs to survive. The reason I want to make sure some of the bugs eat other bugs is because all the bugs near the river are small, meaning less to eat every time an animal there dies, which means a lack of food, which is a possible reason the bugs living at the river are so small.

If I were to take some of the bugs out of their natural environment (the Makiki Stream), and only fed them with leave I found at the Makiki Stream, then they would not eat anything and die, because they do not eat leaves to survive. The reason I want to make sure the animals don't eat leaves is because there are so many leaves at the stream, which means that they would not be at a lack for food if they did eat leaves, which means that the reason for the animals being so small would not be lack of food.

December 3rd:

The stream wasn't very different compared to the last time I had been there. The pile of dead twigs and leaves was still there, and the plants were in the same places they had been previously. I didn't see any signs of more gardening being done. There was a little less wind, and a few more mosquitos. Something I noticed was that there were more spiders then I had seen on any of my previous visits. Their webs were out in the open, clear to the path. The day was also more sunny.

After I left, I realized I had gotten a mosquito bite, but the cool thing is, the bites from these mosquitos only hurt while you are getting bitten! It doesn't feel itchy after 5 minutes or so, and it doesn't get very red or swell up.

I did an experiment while at the stream this time around. I wanted to test my theory that the bugs at the Makiki Stream were small because of lack of food. I placed 10 grapes around the stream (at different, varying locations). The grapes were red, seedless, about an inch wide and 1.5 inches tall, and were separated from the stem. I left them lying on the ground, just like any fruit would be lying on the ground after falling out of a tree (I know grapes don't grow on trees or even in Hawaii, but I wanted to test if the bugs ate fruit in general, so I figured it would be acceptable to use small grapes). I left the grapes at the stream at 3:16 p.m., and came back at 5:25 p.m. In just a little over 2 hours, bugs had already swarmed around each grape, crawling into the part of the grape that used to be connected to the stem, and were eating the inside of the fruit. This means that the bugs at the stream might be small from the lack of food, because they eat fruit, but there isn't a lot of fruit growing near the stream.

I don't have any graphs to show, because my experiment was just to test if the bugs did one thing, or the other: if they ate fruit or if they didn't.

It's true my experiment doesn't prove anything, it just makes my theory that the bugs are small from lack of food more likely. Maybe bugs eat fruit AND plants, or maybe just some of the bugs eat fruit and other don't, or maybe the bugs were not actually eating the grapes, but smelling it and checking out something new and unusual in their environment. But now I know the bugs eat fruit. So all in all, I hypothesize that the bugs are small from the lack of fruit growing in their habitat, and are unable to get the energy they need to grow larger.

Maybe something else I could have done to make the experiment more accurate would have been to use breadfruit, because there was a breadfruit tree by the stream. Maybe I could have also collected dead ants and observed if they were eaten as well. Then, I would be sure that they ate the fruit actually in their environment, and I could have seen if they ate only fruit, or if fruit was only part of the bugs' diets.