Authors: Gerar S, Vlad A, Patrick W, Nathaniel C.
Hey guys, it’s us again, the Good Boys back at it again to
bring good news to you all!!!
This time we were given the task to create an ecosphere where we could create an environment where organisms of our choice would potentially thrive. We had to first propose a food web of the organisms we chose to include in order to show their role in the environment and relationships among one another. Here is the list of organisms we included along with their quantities:
This time we were given the task to create an ecosphere where we could create an environment where organisms of our choice would potentially thrive. We had to first propose a food web of the organisms we chose to include in order to show their role in the environment and relationships among one another. Here is the list of organisms we included along with their quantities:
Contents
|
Amount
|
Nutrient
Water
|
200mL
|
DI
water
|
2L
|
Gravel
|
1
cup
|
Fine
Sand
|
2
cups
|
Soil
|
97.23g
|
Volvox
|
2
drops
|
Selenastrum
|
2
drops
|
Ram
Horn Snail
|
1
count
|
Daphnia
|
16
count
|
Mermaid
|
1
count
|
Bacopa
|
1 count
|
After choosing our organisms, we proposed the following food
web to sustain them:
This is the first day of creating the ecosphere. There was a “natural disaster”
from pouring in the water without fully compacting the soil beneath the gravel
and sand, causing the murkiness of the water. We named our snail Jesse because
it is a gender neutral name. All of our daphnia’s names start with “R.”
Hopefully our organisms survive! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
April 20th
The water looks more clear, but no daphnia were seen! Jesse
is happy and it looks like Jesse shed his/her shell.
April 25th
Turns out the shell was a baby! Jesse, you dawg. ( ͡° ͜ʖ
͡°)=ε✄ We named Jesse’s child Jr. The daphnia are still missing, but the water
is clearer than ever. (⊙ᗜ⊙)
Jesse continues to live happily and move around the
ecosphere. ᕙʕಠᴥಠʔᕗ We also noticed a floating “plant”, seen in the middle
picture.
May 2nd
Here
is Nate disturbing the ecosphere. In the 2nd picture, we noticed that there
were air bubbles along the bottom of our ecosphere, which we deduced to be a
sign of microbial activity. The 3rd picture show’s Jesse is alive and well and
the 4th picture shows Jr. almost the size of Jesse…
〳 ◉ ͜ʖ ◉ 〵
〳 ◉ ͜ʖ ◉ 〵
It is great that your group's snail had babies! In my group's ecosphere our snail just disintegrated :/. I do find it slightly surprising that your daphnia are "missing", your ecosphere seems like it would be good for them with the presence of volvox for food. Do you think the murkiness on the first day may have had something to do with your lack of visible daphnia?
ReplyDeleteHi Jessica,
ReplyDeleteWe were also surprised by the presence of baby snails since we only had one snail put in our ecosphere. Our best guess is that the snail was pregnant at the time it was put in. We still don't know why we could not see any Daphnia, even after a couple of weeks, as like you, we thought we could sustain them. I don't believe the murkiness on the first day had anything significant to do with the missing Daphnia, since it was just soil floating around in the water.
Your ecosphere went the exact opposite of how my group's went! The two main difference between our ecospheres was that our group used anabaena instead of volvox, and we used mystery pond water instead of DI water. Our daphnia growth was explosive, but our snail died. Perhaps the algae/extra bacteria in the mystery pond water was what the daphnia needed to grow. Your baby snails are super cute, and its pretty amazing that you guys have 5 of them!! I wonder how many you will have by the end of the experiment.
ReplyDeleteBy the rate Jesse is spitting them out, we'll have many. We didn't go with the pond water because the pond water has too much un measurable variables (many different organism that we won't and don't know about). Maybe thats the reason why your daphnia survived and ours didn't. Something in the pond water that the daphnia needed that our nutrient water did not provide.
ReplyDeleteHi guys! You guys do such a great job of making your writings interesting. Now interestingly enough our groups had pretty similar things in the jars, minus the sand and one of the plants was different. My group also had a shrimp, but for seem reason your snail seemed to do much better. Do you think the small differences made a large difference for the snails or it was just a coincidence? Our snail died, but oddly enough still had 2 snail babies later on. Maybe all of our snails got knocked up before we put them in our ecospheres. Good job taking care of Jesse guys.
ReplyDeleteHi guys!
ReplyDeleteFirst off I loved your post! The wit behind it was fabulous, and really made me laugh. It was very clever and very much appreciated. I'm sorry to hear that your Daphnia appear to not have survived the natural disaster that occurred. Perhaps a funeral could be held in their honor later. All of our daphnia died as well although we think ours were eaten by the utricilaria that we put into our ecosphere. They were just too good. Also, you guys had snail babies too! Our snail is named Gary, and Gary has produced many babies as well, although your ecosphere is much clearer than ours. I wonder why that is. Maybe it's the combination of water that you used in your ecosphere or perhaps it's because you didn't add hay into your ecosphere as we did with ours. Overall, good post and great job taking care of Jesse guys :)