Fun-Gis: Ecology Research Project

Hello, Team Fun-Gi here presenting our very amazing, awesome, cool. epic, (if we do say so ourselves) ecology project!

For our project, we are looking into the small world of microbes! Specifically, microbe interaction with western sword ferns, or Polystichum munitum if we're trying to sound fancy. 

Polystichum munitum

We were first thinking of doing blackberry bushes, but we couldn't think of enough locations to sample. Dandelions were the next thought since they're everywhere, but we also trashed that idea because we wanted to have adventures in the forest. Thus, western sword ferns were chosen.

Our main goal is to sample the soil near the roots of these sword ferns at various locations, and analyze the bacteria that grows in them. We are hoping to find one or two bacteria that grows in all the soil we sampled. We hypothesize that this bacteria will be one that is helpful to the growth of the plant, perhaps some sort of rhizobacteria which is a bacteria that forms mutually beneficial relationships to the roots of plants and performs important processes like nitrogen fixation. Our plan is to eventually extract DNA from the one or two bacteria common to all samples, PCR it for amplification, then ship it out to get sequenced so we can identify them. 

We started our experiment quite a bit earlier than other groups, not because we knew what we were doing (we're still pretty confused... shhh), but because our experiment needs a lot of time for growing bacteria. What we've managed to do is collect 3 samples at 3 locations for a total of 9 samples. Our 3 locations were Gold Park, Pine Ridge Park, and Lynndale Park. We decided to grow our bacteria samples at 2 different temperatures: room temperature and  4C, which meant we had a whopping total of  18 TSA plates. It smelled just lovely.  

The plates have already grown, but we're keeping the results a mystery until our next post. Oh, the SUSPENSE!

While you're on the edge of your seat waiting for our next post, have a watch of this video of us out collecting samples on our first day:

UPDATE: Just realized you can't fullscreen this video so here's a link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzFsia6tXjD0empFY0VCNm1ZV3M/view

Too clean or not too clean?

We used pond water from Goodhope pond, Sprague pond and Christina's pond. We prepared 12 biospheres, Three biospheres per pond along with 3 control biospheres. We used soil and gravel as the base of our biosphere. We filled the biosphere with 2.3L of our respective pond water. For our control we filled the biosphere with 0.2L of nutrient water + 2.1L of tap water. We also placed a mermaid plant in each of our biosphere along with 5 Daphnia.

We ran into a few complications when we went to collect our pond water. When we were collecting the pond water from Lynnwood’s Mini Park, we were met by an army of geese. It seemed like the geese did not want us to collect their precious pond water, they kept giving us the look of death through their tiny beady black eyes. At first we were terrified to approach them because they outnumbered us. There was only 4 of us against at least 20 of them even though they might have been slightly shorter than us, their necks can stretch pretty far and their bite is definitely going to be worse than their quack! But Thinh ignored their wrathful gaze and just plowed ahead to collect our precious pond water. Thankfully the geese ignored him and did not attempt to disturb him although they kept glaring at him and they also made sure that he knew that they were extremely dissatisfied at his disturbance.

After the attack of the geese, we made our way to our second pond which was Goodhope pond before we headed back to the lab. Over there we ran into 2 problems. The first problem was that the water was too shallow. We couldn't collect enough water to fill our gallon jugs. After much debating we decided that the only thing we can do is to actually enter the pond. So as we start figuring out how to get deeper in the water, an officer from the Lynnwood police department came up behind us, you know because we didn’t look sketchy at all. Judging by his confused face he probably thought we were doing something much worse than collecting pond water, but he reminded us we probably shouldn’t drink the water. We reminded him we were actually there to test the grossness of the water. He lingered a little before leaving when we realized we definitely should have gotten a picture with the cop to show you guys. After that it was back to the lab to see what was in our water.

We set up three identical for each the pond waters and a control in lab. With each of the pond waters, we also had to check every detail of the water like pH, oxygen dissolved, and obviously what organisms might be living in it. There was some pretty interesting results, but as Thinh likes to say, it’s a surprise.

Ecology Research Project

Hey everyone!
We want to share with you what we are doing for our Ecology Research Project.

Bumblebee on a Rhododendron flower

During this project, we will observe bees while being exposed to a set of fake flowers that have different combinations of fragrances and nectar concentrations. Our goal is to see whether or not there is a preference for either fragrance or nectar concentration, or if there is a correlation between the two (ie: one fragrance will be preferred over the others, one nectar concentration will be preferred over the other, or one combination is strongly preferred over the others).

Here's what we intend to use for our flower combinations: 

Fragrances	Nectar Concentration (Sugar to Water Ratio)
·    No fragrance ·    Lavender ·    Rosemary ·    Lemongrass	·  0:1 ·  1:1, 1:2, 2:1 ·  1:1, 1:2, 2:1 ·  1:1, 1:2, 2:1

     So far we have gathered most of our supplies and modified our fake flowers to hold micro pipette tips for nectar. In the next days of lab we plan to make up our "nectar", which will just be sugar and water combined together in the specified volume to volume ratios, as well as measuring sucrose concentrations in the nectar of flowers we see being visited by bees to see if we are in the correct ranges of concentration for attracting them. In the event that our concentrations are grossly different from those observed in actual flowers these concentrations may be modified.
     We created our flowers from fake flowers we purchased at Hobby Lobby. These flowers have a shape similar to tulips, and are purple which is a color known to attract honeybees. We wanted to make sure we picked flowers which were all the same color, and were a color already known to attract bees so that would not be a conflicting variable with either fragrance or nectar concentration. The flowers were in a bouquet originally so they were disassembled from the bouquet so they were all individual. The center of each flower had a plastic replica of the inner reproductive parts of the flower. There was then a small plastic piece in the center which held this and the flower to the stem. Each flower was pulled off the stem, the center plastic piece removed and then replaced with a small Eppendorf pipette tip which was then hot glued shut so it would effectively hold the "nectar" without leaking. We then inserted this new flower top back into the stem, and voila! If you'd like to see exactly what we did feel free to watch our vlog, which will be linked below. The flowers turned out amazing, and we're all super happy with them.

     In order to keep the flowers separated they will all be inserted into plastic cups that will be filled so as to keep them standing upright, and then the cups will be labeled with the fragrance and nectar concentration of the flower it contains. To mimic the fragrance the flowers would give off we've collected essential oils of flowers known to be attractive to bees based off bee-friendly plant lists provided by the Puget Sound Beekeeper Association and the Seattle Urban Bee Project. These essential oils will be diluted in water, and then a small piece of cheesecloth will be soaked in the water in order to pick up the fragrance. The cheesecloth will then be wrapped around the top of the Eppendorf pipette in the flower to mimic the way flowers would give off fragrance to attract the bees.
     The flowers will then be set out in an open area for a set amount of time, and observed to see which ones will be visited by bees. These visits will be recorded, and the data tabulated to attempt to determine if any correlations exist.
     We intend to go to at least two locations, Bellevue Botanical Garden and another location which we haven't chosen yet. So far our options are between the Kruckeberg Botanic Garden and Evergreen Arboretum & Garden. If any of you have suggestions on places to go, please comment below!

Angiosperm Resistance to Toxicity of Nicotine and Petroleum [by JESK]

Title: Angiosperm Resistance to Toxicity of Nicotine and Petroleum [by JESK]

Authors: Emma Brasseur, Shane Hall, Jessica Roth, & Karina Yu

Description: In this research project, we will be testing plants’ resistance to different toxic substances. We will be using the angiosperm Petunia, and testing it with Nicotine and Petroleum. We thought that this could be a very useful experiment to observe the effects of when chemicals get into soil and absorbed by the plants roots, as well as hypothesize how it could then affect the environment. We chose to test the plant with nicotine to see the possible effect of a smoking environment on a plant, and we chose petroleum because we want to see how plants could cope with oil spills. The significance of this is to understand how plants react to unnatural disasters.

Details of what we have done so far: Unfortunately, our liquid nicotine has yet to arrive and may never arrive, so we have not added any toxins to our fifteen Petunias at this time. Most likely, we will have to create a cigarette tea instead of using liquid nicotine to start our project. We have set up our project by labeling the plants based on the toxins that will be added, the dilution factor of either 5% or 0.5%, and numbering them 1-3. We labeled the plants 1-3 to ensure that our measurements of their leaves and shoots do not get mixed up. We also color coded the labels for each dilution so no plant was given the wrong mixture. For example, the control is blue. We have also taken photographs of the roots of each plant to see if the toxins will affect their health by the end of the experiment.

Figure 1: Pictures of Our Lovely Petunias as We Set Them Up.

Figure 2: The roots of one of our Petunias

Figure 3: A line up of each group of Petunias

The Ecosphere Wonderland [by JESK]

Authors: Emma Brasseur, Shane Hall, Jessica Roth, & Karina Yu

Recap:

Snail	Heterotroph	1 Snail
Shrimp	Heterotroph	1 Shrimp
Bacopa Plant	Autotrophic	1 Bacopa Plant
Aquatic Floating Fern	Autotrophic	1 Aquatic Floating Fern
Anabaena	Autotrophic	2.25 mL
Daphnia	Heterotrophic	4.75 mL

Table 1: The original contents of our ecosphere

New Developments:

Since our last post, our ecosphere has developed more algae, and snail babies (Figure 4). The development of our snail babies was slightly surprising to us, considering our parent snail has been dead/decomposed for quite some time now (Figure 3). Other than these new forms of life, our ecosphere is the same. Our shrimp is still alive and is doing very well. We were even able to record our shrimp hightailing around the ecosphere.

Compare:

We compared our ecosphere to Mariam’s group ecosphere (Figure 5). They included a snail, and the aquatic floating fern in their ecosphere like our group, but they did not add a shrimp, daphnia, anabaena, or bacopa like we did. However, MCDC had hay and three mermaid plants in their ecosphere. In the similar organisms the main difference was that their snail was still alive. Also, the water in their ecosphere seems to be a bit clearer, while ours is a little murky.

Video 1: Video of Shrimp

Figure 1: Ecosphere on May 11

Figure 2: Shrimp Swimming Around Ecosphere [May 11]

Figure 3: Decomposing Snail [May 18]

Figure 4: Baby Snails on Side of Container, As Well As Algal Growth [ May 18]

Figure 5: Mariam’s Group Ecosphere

Ecology Research Project by The Good Boys

こんにちは, みなさん! It’s us, the good boys, back bringing the good news to you. For our research project, we decided we wanted to investigate competition among species, specifically aphids. They are small sap-sucking insects that feed on the phloem of plants. To do this, we tested competition between two species of aphids by placing two species of aphids on the same plant, and comparing their population to control groups. This would tell us if one aphid is dominant, or if they are just co-existing. Christina spent grueling hours hunting for aphids, and her work was much appreciated. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ

To keep the aphids on the plants, however was a bit of a challenge, so we came up with a DIY plastic cylinder to cover the pea plant, with mesh to cover the top. Here are a few of the cylinders that we made:

Here is one of our pea plants. We took off some leaves and plants so that each plant would have the same amount of leaves and plants for consistency.

To get the aphids on the plant, we used a paint brush so that the aphids would be comfortable for the ride:

Here is grand master Vlad placing aphids on the pea plants. It took him forever to separate the two species of aphids. Good job, Vlad!

Here is a close up of Vlad finding the aphids through the dissecting microscope:

Enjoy more of these pictures of Vlad as he counts and moves these aphids:

And after all that work, here are our finished products:

We plan to observe the aphid counts every two days or so, and hope that we find something interesting. This could explain if a particular species was declining in population in the wild, so maybe we could find that out! さようなら!