Conifer Forest April 25th, 2019

Coniferous Forest Week 4, Thursday Lab Section

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Today in lab, we analyzed our biocube material. We started by dumping out the contents and organizing them. We had a small tree that we brought with us, so we unfolded it and took a picture of it against the whiteboard. We separated the contents into piles of leaves, pine needles, wood/branches, fungus, moss, and animals. We then analyzed these under the microscope. We were pleasantly surprised at the microscope sights. The fungus under the microscope was very porous, and resembled a sponge. The ferns resembled a grass under the microscope. While looking at the ferns, we saw a small tick or spider like animal. I tried looking for the animal with my bare eyes, but it was too small to find. The leaves and pine needles had much more detail in them under the microscope. The leaves looked vascular, and the the pine needles looked rigid and had a square shape to them. We then looked at a millipede and worm. The millipedes individuals legs were visible. One problem we encountered was taking images with the microscope camera. We tried calling multiple people to help, and even switched microscopes, but it did not end up working out. We ended up just putting my cell phone camera up to the microscope lens and taking images that way. Due to this, some of the images came out a bit blurry or they have dark spots in them. We finished by cleaning up the mess we made. This was a good conclusion to this lab unit, as we found it very interesting analyzing the microscopic views of the plants and animals we observed in nature.

- By Dan