Presque Isle

So a few weeks ago, my class met up at Presque Isle to learn how to identify the different kinds of trees that were there. As we were doing that, we also had to keep an eye out for examples of specific things. One of those was parasitism, and that one was pretty easy to figure out right away. Since these the area wasn't that big, and with the water being close by, there were plenty of mosquitoes flying around and sucking blood from animals and people alike.

Another thing we had to look out for was commensalism, and that one was a little difficult to find, due to the few animals seen in the woods. I did manage to see a few squirrels and chipmunks climbing up trees. They use these trees as homes and use their acorns as its primary food source. While this benefits the squirrels and chipmunks, this neither helps or harms the trees.

My group and I managed to find a couple of little frogs hopping around the grass and dirt. It's niche is that it eats mosquitoes and other flies, and they are also one of the food sources for some predators such as snakes and birds.

Prior to going into the woods, there were a few flowers that had bees in them, which demonstrated mutualism. Both the bees and the flowers benefited from this through pollination.

For interspecific competition, it didn't really occur too much with animals since there were too few to be seen. The different kinds of trees, though, are a good example because all of them compete for soil, water, and sunlight. As for intraspecific competition, it was a lot easier to spot. More than once, I saw a couple of chipmunks competing for food.

Rotted logs on the ground were a good example of microhabitats. They were different from the rest of the area because they were dead and no longer growing. It's also darker, more damp, and usually warmer than the surrounding area. On most of those logs, you can find decomposers like termites, ants, bacteria, and fungi.

There were also several examples of biogeochemical cycles at Presque Isle. A couple of the obvious ones are the water cycle and the carbon cycle. We see the water cycle in two ways. The first is the cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. The 2nd is the storage of water in Lake Superior and in snow during the winter. As for the carbon cycle, it can be observed in plants during photosynthesis and respiration.