Kelly+Ann+Lee


 * Kelly's Journal** (plant person)

Oct. 5

This area is a stream in Makiki next to the Nature Center. It includes a freshwater stream with a variety of organisms in it. Surrounding the stream are various native, introduced, and invasive plants. There are also, rocks and signs of humanity (liter) in the stream.

I thought that this place would be a good location to study because it’s shady, and close to the homes of my group members and I. Aside from that, this environment is filled with a wide variety of organisms, which live both in the water and on land.

First I’ll start off with describing the niche of a native species. One native species I see here next to the stream is a coconut tree. It’s really long, tall and skinny, and seems to be standing rather alone on this grassy field. Of obviously feeds by using the sun for photosynthesis, which I assume is why it’s one of the tallest trees here. Its here predators might include humans, and mongoose that feed on their seeds (coconuts.)

Next I’ll describe the niche of an introduced species. An example of an introduced species that I see here would be taro/kalo. Taro, since I see it growing in the water, I would assume to be an aquatic plant, which gets most of its nutrients from the water. Since it is a plant, it would need to feed off of sunlight. It does get some sunlight, but isn’t too tall. Its main predator would be a human.

Another type of plant that I see here is an invasive species. This invasive species is a sunflower. The sunflowers here grow in a vine-live formation over the surface of the water. This is probably so that it can hog all of the water and not let any other plant have access to it. It’s probably choking out whatever happens to be underneath it too. It does not appear to have any predators.

Oct. 19

An example of a relationship that I see here would be parasitism. Next to the stream I see a drooping palm tree whose fronds are covered in vines. This is a parasitic relationship because the vine benefits from the relationship while the palm tree is being hurt. The vines benefit from the relationship by having a quick way to get up to sunlight via palm tree. The palm tree is hurt from the relationship because its solar panels, or leaves, are covered in vines and therefore blocked from the sunlight. The palm tree also has to spend energy on carrying the weight of the vines, which is why it’s drooping.

Oct. 31

Every rock here is covered in moss, weather it’s in the water or not. There are not as many plants growing in the water as there were before; there are almost none. It appears that someone has cut the California grass. The have not changed enough for me to tell. There generally just aren’t that many plants, not including trees, here. There no flowers anywhere; the taro/kalo seems to be the only plant in the water that’s still here. This may be because the water level is a lot higher than before, because of the recent rain, and the water is rushing very quickly.

I think that the kalo is the only plant that is able to survive in this much water running this fast, because it’s adapted to do so. We could test this by creating controlled experiments with water running at different speeds. Then put different plants into each of the controlled experiments, and see which ones survive. If the kalo is the only plant to survive in one of the higher speeds of water, then it’s more fit to live in a rainy stream environment than the other plants.

I think that there is so much moss on all of the rocks today because of the high moisture level in the air from the rain. To test this you could make controlled experiments with different levels of humidity. Then put rocks with the same amount of moss into each of the controlled experiments. If the experiment with the most moisture in the air grows more moss at a faster rate, then moss grows better in humid conditions.

I think that plants grow in the sunlight and soil better than they grow with more than enough water and little sunlight. This is because the plants that are in the dirt and the sun are more plentiful of plants in the stream and shade. To test this you could set up an environment with a little amount of water, but lots of sunlight, and an environment with plenty water and little sunlight. If the plants in the environment with little water and lots of sunlight grow better than in the other environment, then plants grow better in little water in sunlight, than they do in lots of water with little sunlight.

Since sunlight is so sparse down here under the canopy, I would think that plants with the biggest broadest leaves would be more likely to survive, and have offspring. Natural selection would let only the plants with leaves that can get the most sunlight survive. Other plants that can’t absorb as much sunlight will die out.

Nov. 30

It’s a lot colder today than it was on my last visit. Everything is wet; there’s absolutely no dry surface because of the constant drizzle here. I can’t find any rocks to sit on because they’re all either wet or mossy and wet. Everything generally looks greener than last time because of the abundance of water. There’s just a little wind today unlike the hurricane like conditions of last time, so I guess that’s why there’re so many mosquitoes. There’re so many of them on me right now that I’m not even going to try to swat at them. Other than those things, everything seems to be the same as last time.

Because of the wet conditions, and constant moisture, I thought that it would be a good time to do an experiment on moss. I collected generalized data from eight certain kinds of moss habitats. Those habitats were a rock under still water, wood under still water, a rock under rushing water, wood under rushing water, a rock on the edge of the stream, wood on the edge of the stream, a rock far from the stream, and wood far from the stream. I rated the amount of moss of these surfaces on a scale of 0-5.

0 no moss 1 very little and/or dying moss 2 a little living moss 3 some moss 4 a lot of moss 5 blanketed in moss



From this I concluded that moss does not grow on surfaces submerged in water. Moss grows out of water on both wood and rock surfaces, but grows better on rock. Surfaces on the edge of the stream grow more moss than surfaces far from the stream. Rocks on the edge of the stream grow the most moss, and surfaces under water grow no moss. I think this is because moss needs water to grow, because edges on the edge of the stream would have more access to water than surfaces far from the stream. At the same time though, moss needs carbon dioxide and oxygen for photosynthesis and cellular respiration. It’s not possible to get these resources while growing on a surface submerged in water.

Since there aren’t too many large animals in or near the stream (shrimp, guppies, crawfish, birds,) I’m assuming that animals don’t make a huge impact on the carbon cycle near this stream. Animal life itself cannot provide enough carbon dioxide for all of this greenery in this habitat. I would think that plants get most of their carbon dioxide from decomposing leaves on the forest floor, and from activity outside of the habitat. There is sufficient decomposing material, fossil fuel burning, humans, and other animals for plants to get enough CO2. The plants here produce oxygen in the process of photosynthesis, and that oxygen gets consumed by the plants, and animals.

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