Biology – Page 6 – Montessori Muddle

Life on the Hill

One of two turtles found on the slope above the school.

Last week, on one of our daily hiking trips up the slope for P.E., we came across two turtles. It was odd enough to find the first one on the way up the hill since they’re so well camouflaged against the brown leaves littering the floor of the forest.

The students wanted to take it with them, but since we’ve had a turtle in the lab this semester already I told them they should leave it there.

They left it on the ground and we continued on. It was only about 15 meters off the top of the ridge, so they wanted to stop by and see it again on our way back down. I bet them they couldn’t find it again, even though it had only been five minutes and turtles are known to be slow. They still couldn’t find it, but less than a minute later they found the second turtle on a different place.

It was quite a bit of fun looking for turtles in the forest. It occurred to me that it would be nice to have another objective on our hikes. So now, every time we go up the hill, we’re bringing a bunch of sample jars. Since I’ve been thinking about arthropoda lately our first few outings will be to collect insects and spiders on different parts of the slope to see if there’s an ecological difference due to the microclimatic differences.

Searching for bugs in an old, rotten log.

Arkansan Spiders

The Heifer Ranch is home to quite the variety of large spiders, including the tarantulas we found a couple years ago. Most of them work hard at keeping the insect pests down. Here’s a collection of some of them we ran into this year.

A green spider from near the Heifer global village's refugee camp. — A green lynx spider from near the Heifer global village’s refugee camp.

A brown spider found in the brush on the dam.

A wolf spider with babies on its back. Found in the grass near the foot of the dam.

Yellow garden spider found in the herb garden.

Bobcat?

Ms. Mertz believes she found some feline tracks in the soft sediment next to the puddles in the creek that may belong to a bobcat. Or maybe a large housecat. Unlike canine tracks — like dogs and coyotes — felines don’t leave claw marks in their tracks.

The Michigan DNR has a nice comparison of bobcat to other tracks, while the Missouri Dept. of Conservation has a nice reference of common animal tracks for the state.

Rotifers

Two students working on their campus ecology project were using the compound microscope to look at microbes associated with the leaf matter from the creek, and they found these two rotifers.

The one on the left was trying to suck in the two green protists, which generated a current that sent the protists into a circular loop.

Searching for Life in a Drying Creek

The puddles along the creek’s bed are getting smaller and smaller. Last week, Ms. Mertz’s class was out doing their ecological survey of the creek life lead by Ms. Currier. They still found lots of arthropods, frogs and some fish concentrated around the remaining puddles.

Turtle

We have quite a number of box turtles on campus, but this visitor to biology class comes from Ms. M’s garden. You can tell the age by counting the rings on its shell. This guy is about 12 years old.

Grasshopper

I caught a grasshopper in the bushes this morning. They’re a bit of a pest at Heifer so I didn’t feel too badly about bringing it in to inspect under the microscope.

The students found it to be curious as well. So much so, that one decided — of her own volition — to diagram it as well; including one of the small fecal pellets our grasshopper had graciously deposited into its petri dish.

Exploratory diagram of a grasshopper (by E.H.).

When we get back, I’ll point out Cmassingale’s nice grasshopper dissection page. It’s a pretty decent reference for gross anatomy.

Students studying a grasshopper under the microscope. — Studying a grasshopper under the microscope.

Wild Plums

I asked Scott Woodbury to give my Biology students another tour of their campus. The last time was for the Environmental Science class, with a focus on invasive species. This time we spent a little more time identifying species for students’ ecology projects; they each had to identify and research a species found on the campus.

One of the more interesting finds was a wild plum (Prunus americana) that we found on the slope at the boundary between the grassy/shrubby slope and the taller trees of the forest above.

The diverse ecosystems on the TFS campus -- from the creek to the grassy school grounds to the reforesting slope to the forested ridge -- are well shown in this diagram. — The plums tree was located up on the slope at the edge of the forest’s tree line.

The plums are edible. They’re supposed to be good for pies and sauces. The Shaw Nature Center finds that these tall shrubs/small trees are a good sellers at their plant sales.

Propagation from seed is apparently a little tricky. The best way is to process them through the digestive system of a coyote. Alternatively, you have to let them ferment for a while to break down the outer coating of the seeds.

They would be a nice, native addition to our orchard.