The "Fun Gi's" Bio Ecosystem

On April 11th, the Fun-gis set out to create our very own ecosystem. We wanted it to be able to sustain the life of the various organisms we put in the sphere. We named it “Biology Bottom.”

Here is a look at the making of Biology Bottom:

The materials we used are as follows:

• 2 cups dirt (8 oz.)
• 2 cups sand (8 oz.)
• 2 cups gravel (8 oz.)
• 1 mermaid plant
• 1 bacopa
• 1 floating fern
• 2 ml anabaena
• 1 ml selenastrum
• 10 daphnia
• 1 snail “Gary”
• Mystery pond water

Organisms within the Ecosphere:

Ecosphere Ecosystem:

Our little ecosystem worked perfectly… until it didn’t. When the Fun-gis walked into class on April 20th, we expected everything to be normal, but that wasn’t the case. When we checked up on Biology Bottom, we noticed a horrible fact: Gary the snail had died! All that was left of him was his empty, algae-ridden shell.

Besides the death of Gary, our ecosystem was alright otherwise. Upon conducting some research, it might be proposed that Gary starved to death. There wasn’t all that much algae in the jar until after Gary’s passing, which is an important source of food. However, snails eat plants as well, so our poor snail’s death remains a mystery. It is also possible that the pond water harmed Gary. This is his shell on April 25th. The algae that surrounded his shell seems to have dissolved away by this time, perhaps eaten by the daphnia.

The organism that truly thrived in Biology Bottom is the daphnia. In the video below, you can see many of them swimming around.

We started with exactly 10 daphnia, but from the looks of it, they have started to reproduce. An exact number was hard to count because they moved around too much, and the glass jar made it hard to see, however, the number of daphnia seems to have surpassed 20 or even 30.

The next noticeable change to our ecosystem was the presence of algae caking the side of the jars. Without Gary to help clean, it seems algae could grow without any hindrance. The picture below was taken on May 6th. Before that, no one had noticed any algae growth.

The abundance of algae might have contributed to the booming population of daphnia since that is what they eat. Before there was algae, the daphnia most likely consumed the bacteria and algae (anabaena and selenastrum) that we put into the ecosystem. Since we used mystery pond water, there was probably a plethora of bacteria that the daphnia could have consumed.

All in all, our biospheres seems to be doing pretty well. Aside from the tragic passing of Gary the Snail, our daphnia and various autotrophs have thrived and will hopefully continue doing so.