Out of all the ecospheres in our class our ecosphere was most similar to the group JESK. Below are the two ecospheres for comparison.
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| KKJT Ecosphere |
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| JESK Ecosphere |
KKJT & JESK Similarity Matrix
I figured the best way to display the similarities and differences in the least amount of text was to use an all too familiar similarity matrix! Our ecosphere contained anabaena, a mermaid plant, and the protist stentor - JESK's did not. JESK's ecosphere contained pond water and a bacopa plant where as ours did not.
SNAIL DEATH ):
In both of our ecospheres the snails died immediately, I would assume this is due to the fact that snails feed on algae and it took several days for algae to accumulate from what was probably already existing in the pond water. Our ecosphere however did not have any algae to feed on because we did not include pond water in our ecosphere.
BABY SNAILS (:
Roughly three weeks proceeding the death of the mature snails, both of our ecosphere gave rise to baby snails! The snails must have laid their eggs before they died and the baby snails were able to survive off of the accumulating dead organic matter or algae.
GHOST SHRIMP
I had never seen a transparent shrimp until this ecosphere experiment, not surprisingly that is how they got their name! These ghost shrimp will eat almost anything which helps explain how they have been so well off in both ecospheres. Every time we checked up on our ecosphere the shrimp would constantly be picking through the detritus in the soil or feeding off dead plant matter. These shrimp are great pickers and eat like machines!
STENTOR
Our stentors did not survive in our ecosphere, so I did a little bit of research to figure out why. Interestingly stentors are stalked meaning they are most commonly found attached to the ground. Because these little guys do not move around much you would assume they are likely autotrophic, but they actually filter feel on bacteria and plankton, grabbing food as it flows by. Due to our ecospheres pond-like environment there was not any water flow for the stentors to grab food from, so perhaps the shrimp got to the anabaena first or perhaps the shrimp ate the stentors due to its very large appetite!
DAPHNIA
There did not appear to be any living daphnia in JESK's ecosphere and there definitely were not any surviving daphnia in our ecosphere. Not surprisingly I believe the shrimp ate all of them! The shrimp is definitely the Tyrannosaurus Rex of our ecospheres!
Fun Fact: Dogs do not like giant snails... especially my dog Koda (:
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI think its interesting that your snail died and yet you had snail babies, too! I also really like how you researched many of your organisms (i.e, shrimp, stentor).
Its very interesting how our ecospheres were so similar, in that a few of our organisms added were the same. In our ecosphere we actually did add anaebana, just like you did in your ecosphere.
Excellent post!
Koda got so big since you brought her to class, it's only been a few months!
ReplyDeleteI know shes a giant!!
DeleteHi guys,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! The differences between KKJT and JESK are clear and detailed. I could understand well what you guys did when I was reading the post. Indeed, our group, MCDC, also had the comparsion with KKJT. Our group got baby snails, but the parent snail did not dead. After reading your post, I have a question want to know, how you guys determine that the snail dead, if it dead already, how the baby snails produced and survived?
In addition, I feel sorry for the ghost shrimp.
Chloe