View allAll Photos Tagged Sp2017
This picture was taken during spring break, and was found within the South Carolina aquarium in Charleston. This is a picture of Haliaeetus leucocephalus or the Bald Eagle. The bald eagle photographed is named Liberty, who was damaged in the wild due to a collision and is unable to fly. Bald eagles are secondary, apex predators who sit at the top of the food web within mountain ecosystems. Due to trophic cascades, changes made within the bottom of the web, can cause powerful, indirect interactions via bottom-up control. This can be clearly seen via the effects of DDT on Bald Eagle populations. After World War II DDT became a prevalent pesticide and insecticide, however its effects within the ecosystem was unknown. The DDT seeped into the watershed of the ecosystems, where plants and fish absorbed it. As apex predators, the eagles would consume prey which contained DDT and therefore become heavily poisoned due to bioaccumulation. The DDT inhibited a chemical property of the egg shell and caused it to become weak and brittle, and when the eagle would roost and sit on the egg, the eggs would break. Today, DDT is banned, but the new threat to eagle populations in AVM or Avian vacuolar myelinopathy. It is believed this deasease is passed from the invasive aquatic hydrilla plant to waterfowl and then the eagle, however this new disease is not well understood as the exact causative agent is still unknown to researchers. More information and sources can be found here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_vacuolar_myelinopathy & www.fws.gov/midwest/eagle/recovery/biologue.html & www.nwhc.usgs.gov/disease_information/avian_vacuolar_myel...
Here we have the Canada Goose, the most common bird we can see around our homes, especially after they have migrated south and end up on our campus where this picture was taken. Since we were on the topic predation, the best way to represent it is catch the goose doing what it must: eat. As you can see from the video, the goose is picking at the grass with its beak, showing that it is an herbivorous creature. It is possible the goose is trying to eat a few small insects which would technically make them omnivorous but it's a little too small to see. One unique thing about Canadian geese are their territoriality. Most of us who try to get close to a Canadian goose may end getting chased, even if we were minding our own business. That just proves how small a goose's territory can be and how easily it can be changed to the point that they'll chase after you when they feel you've intruded on them.
This photo was taken on January 20th at Wrightsville Beach. You can see the habitat the sand dunes provides for many plants. The vegetation has adapted to withstand high salt concentrations, sand that covers and uncovers its roots, and desiccation.
This picture was taken on Monday 1/23/17 at 10:34 AM just outside Friday Hall. The photo itself is a collection of water in an area below sea level from Sunday night's rain. This picture greatly describes the ecological concept of weather. Weather is the state of the atmosphere at a give time. That night, it was cloudy and rainy compared to the bright and sunny sky seen in the background, and it all accumulated into this ditch. It also shows the concept of precipitation which takes many forms such as rain. While not shown explicitly, there was presence of small insects striding across the water, and their occupying the area shows the concept of population.The picture also demonstrates the connection the Lithosphere has with the Hydrosphere. With the Lithosphere consisting of dirt and soil and Hydrosphere consisting of all water in any form, the two interact because the soil absorbs the water, providing nutrients for planets rooting in the ground. But since soil can take up a finite amount of water, it can lead to overflows, such as shown.
I took this picture while helping with some gardening in Chapel Hill, NC. I struggled to come up with the exact species of this millipede, I figure out that this millipede is most likely in the Polydesmida family. Millipedes are an important food source in the food chain, especially to beetles, shrews, hedgehogs, rodents, frogs, lizards, birds and turtles. Ants and spiders, in particular, avoid this kind of arthropod due to their unique defense mechanisms. Although we haven’t really started talking about predation in class, I found this to be a very interesting find. The Polydesmida order, also know as flat-backed millipedes, are know for their amazing defense mechanisms or predator defenses. The most common form of defense that millipedes are almost always thought to refer to when alarmed is to curl into a ball. Many animals use this defense or a form similar for predators, either playing dead, retreating into their shell, or curling up into a ball. Surprisingly though, this isn’t the millipedes main form of defense. Millipedes, when provoked by predators, commonly secrete hydrogen cyanide gas to repel predators. This extremely harmful gas was also commonly used as chemical warfare during World War I and World War II.
The purple pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) is the most successful Sarracenia due to its vaster range of distribution.
Although they only grow to about 30cm long, they pack a big punch with their digestive enzymes, along with mutualistic microorganisms that aid the plant in digestion (USDA, Rice). Here we have S. purpurea in the process of digesting its latest meal. The stiff downward pointing hairs trap and further prevent the insect from escaping its rain-filled stomach (Rice). This photo was taken in the Bluethenthal Wildflower Preserve right here on campus.
Sources:
The Internation Carnivorous Plant Society
www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq5538.html
USDA: Forest Service
www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/sarracenia_pu...
Pictured here are three saucer magnolias (Magnolia x soulangeana) from the front of Friday Hall on the campus of UNCW. I took this picture on February 6, back before it became unseasonably warm, so all the trees on campus were just starting to bloom. Saucer magnolias flower in the early spring and are beautiful! These trees are characterized by their “porcelain” pink and white “goblet” shaped flowers. The species is seen as a “landscape show-stopper”. Most early blooming trees time their flowering off of changes in day length or temperature, both of which are factors in this region’s climate. Climate is an average of the weather conditions in an area over a long period of time. Microclimates refer to the climate of a much smaller zone, often only a few meters square. These three trees demonstrate a very simplistic example of microclimates. I noticed that each tree received different amounts of early morning sunlight because of the shade cast by the pines. The more shaded magnolias seem to be flowering later than those with more direct sunlight. Just a slight change in the climate can vary the life cycle of an organism. It was really interesting to see such a drastic difference in the same species only a few meters apart!
References:
A creature that is commonly concerning land owners is this green lichen that grows on the american holy in the Wilmington area. This Lichen is actually composed of both algae and fungus. The two have a symbiotic relationship because the algae does photosynthesis that produces the food and the fungus provides water storage and protection. The interesting relation is actually between the tree and the lichen. It is considered interspecific competition between the two in which the lichen is benefiting from living on the bark of the tree. The tree has no benefit or harm from the lichen causing it to be a positive and neutral relationship.
The Long Leaf Pine (Pinus palustris) tree is a tree native to the south eastern US. This tree is a monoecious plant. Meaning that the male and female flowers exist on the same plant but form seperately (sexual reproduction).
I took this picture of 4 giraffes on February 18, 2017 on the Kilimanjaro Safari at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Lake Bueno Vista, Florida. Two mother giraffes and their babies are pictured. Giraffes are examples of k-strategists. Giraffes have small numbers of offspring (1 or 2 at a time), and take care of their young until they are able to care for themselves. They are also precocial individuals because baby giraffes are able to walk and forage on their own shortly after they are born.
The Sun is necessary for not only the survival of humans, but for all life on Earth. It is the Sun that provides the energy for plants to do photosynthesis, giving off oxygen and providing food for majority of the rest of life on Earth. For humans, the sun can provide Vitamin D, warmth, and light. Without the light from the sun, plants would not be able to photosynthesize and life would ultimately not be able to survive. Along the with light, the sun also provides heat, which is also necessary for survival.
The sun is also involved in the weather and climate experienced on Earth. The temporal changes that give us the different seasons are driven by the sun and the orbit of the Earth around it. The weather we experience on Earth is a result of the energy received from the sun. These changes result in different conditions that affect the ecosystems and communities on Earth. The changes in conditions, such as temperature and rainfall, ultimately caused by the sun, can cause density-independent effects on populations in different communities. The potential of the sun to cause solar changes, even beyond just those related to weather, is a very important concept in ecology.
Sources:
sunlightenment.com/six-important-things-the-sun-does-for-...
This photo is of the sand dunes at Wrightsville Beach taken 1/29/17. Sand dunes are of vital importance in coastal areas. They provide protection to the plants and animals that inhabit from large waves that accompany storms and rising tide. In this respect they help contribute to the fifth key assumption of adaptions due to natural selection, environment. These assumptions were talked about in lecture four. The fifth assumption is that an organism's fitness depends on their interaction with the environment. Grass seen in the photo are able to survive in the sandy soil present on sand dunes help to allow the sand dunes to keep their shape through wind and waves. Sand dunes are also are of key importance to humans as they protect expensive beach front homes from being destroyed by wind and waves.
This is a photo of one of the ponds behind the Headwater apartment complex off of Eastwood. While there are many ecological concepts that could be identified in this photo, several pop out. The first is the concept of intra- or interspecific competition, which can be inferred from the fact that there are a combination of smaller, juvenile plants and larger adults (though I'm not familiar with the presented species names), both needing their optimal amount of resources (here we could say the larger trees are outcompeting the smaller trees for light uptake). Another fundamental concept of ecology seen here is the water cycle. Here we see two forms of water: 1. the pond (liquid water) and 2. the clouds (water vapor, a tiny portion of which may have been supplied by evaporation of the pond water or transpiration from the leaves of the trees). Furthermore, this photo demonstrates the trees' (which are autotrophs) utilization of their ecological resources, the most obvious ones being: water, mineral nutrients (mainly from the sand/dirt mixture that can be seen on the right) and sunlight. It could also be argued that since the photo is of trees and its light out, photosynthesis is also occurring in this photo (and thus we are seeing photosynthetically active radiation), even though the sunlight is partially filtered by the clouds. I could go on, but these were some of the concepts that came to mind when I took this photo.
Biogeochemical cycle s a pathway by which a chemical substance moves through both biotic (biosphere) and abiotic (lithosphere, atmosphere, and hydrosphere) compartments of Earth. Here in this photo we can see parts of the water cycle, which falls under the biogeochemical cycle. The water evaporates and then condenses into clouds, which are seen in the picture. This is important to ecology because water is the reason our planet's biosphere exists.
Rusty Bird Grasshopper (Schistocerca rubiginosa) being consumed by Red Pavement Ants (Tetramorium caespitum). The Red Pavement ants generally prefer sweets but will eat anything. Once the scouts discover a potential food source it will quickly be swarmed, dismantled, and carried back to the colony. These small red ants are not poisonous but can inflict quite the pinch with their powerful mandibles.