View allAll Photos Tagged multiples
I believe there are multiple populations at my capstone site. I also believe there must be a whole lot of mating going on based on the huge population of mosquitoes. There are two small ponds on the property where the mosquitoes are most dense, but there are a few other areas of standing water where the population is also quite high. They seem to be clumped in these areas, but there is still a large number of mosquitoes in the surrounding woods where the population appears to be more uniform. I believe the populations around the pond to be source populations and the populations around the other wetlands that will dry up as the summer season progresses to be sinks. I believe that some of the offspring disperse to other wet areas outside of my capstone area and other members of those populations join this one, while other members may be exchanged from the other pond or wet areas on the property.
Based on a population estimate of 250 producing 10 eggs a piece, that would give me a population of 25 million mosquitoes in 5 cycles. In 20 cycles, that would be a population of 2.5 x 10^22…scary. No, I don’t think the mosquito population in my project area is growing to that extent. Geometric population growth cannot be sustained. It doesn’t take a number of factors into consideration. For one, predation, there are lots of organisms that live off the eggs, larva and pupa of mosquitoes, and there are quite a few organisms that live off adult mosquitoes. It also doesn’t take into consideration that if there is not a blood source for all these female mosquitoes, they will not reproduce any eggs. So lack of resources will affect the population along with predation and abiotic factors may come into play if there is a lack of rainfall and the wetlands and ponds dry up, which has happened in the recent past. (The numbers used in this equation were not accurate, there are 1000’s of mosquitoes at my capstone site, but I couldn’t find anything that told me specifically how many eggs mosquitoes in Michigan usually lay. I also didn’t have an adequate calculator to do my math, so that may be a bit squirrelly too. I think the point was that this kind of population equation is not a realistic way to determine population growth.)
The Calgary fellas let em join their team, we won best team name! They came up with it. :) We didn't win but we had fun.
this sign caught my eye with the two or three painted signs on it, all of which seem to be fading away
There were actually a total of FIVE identical Santas in this yard. How do little kids react to that? Is more better? Then how come no one ever has multiple baby Jesuses?
One of our members was kind enough to allow me to photograph this very very heavy, multiple infestation on her plants. There is evidence of Red Spider mite, White Fly, and caterpillar eggs.
The encouraging thing is that the plants survived both this barrage of attacks, and the very severe spraying regime required to control these pests!
Trip with coworkers Greg, Travis and Brent.
Flew LAX - Nadi, Fiji, then took boat ferry to two different islands where we stayed multiple nights at each island.
One of the trip highlights was visiting the island Cast Away was filmed.
The last night we stayed at Hilton Fiji Beach Resort.
After Fiji we flew to Hong Kong, China on Fiji Air.