Piper, Jayna, and Hannah search for tardigrades!

At the start of today we decided to venture outdoors to check our pitfall traps. Sadly, our results weren’t great. Our first set of cups had no insects but one empty snail shell. Our next set of cups were completely ruined. It appeared as though some sort of animal ripped them to shred. As we walked back inside we decided that we would check our lichen samples that we collected. We squeezed the water out of the lichen with the hope of waterbears in the sample. We pipetted water samples into a petri dish and observed them under the microscope. We found no waterbears, a stentor, but we found a couple of worms and some darting prokaryotes.

Exploring Latta Plantation

Later we decided to go out for a scavenger hunt. We went out with a checklist of things to see and and photograph. Some notable things we observed were a Red-Tailed Hawk being chased by crows, passionflower vines, and a large Sourwood tree. We had a great time on the trails even we slipped in the mud and had gnats fly into our eyes.  

A Passion flower

Raccoon tracks!

Biology Bonanza has been a blast!

-Marisa