This week we did our observations across two days, at two primary locations. I plan on splitting them up accordingly.
Date: Saturday April 27th, 2013
Weather: Cloudy, slightly rainy
Temperature: ~52 degrees F
Time: ~2:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Location: Lake Crescent (Olympic National Park): Barnes Point
One of the most striking things that I noticed as we began to walk on the trails was the fact that we were in old growth forest. There was large coarse woody debris strewn all across the forest floor, ancient looking trees with widths that would challenge even the most experienced tree-huggers, vertical and horizontal diversity among trees, and a good amount of species richness. It seemed that due to the heterogeneity of the forest, a number of ecological niches were available. This is a bit of a side tangent, but something I studied in my Wildlife Conservation class was how individuals within a single population can often fill different niches. For example, dolphins in Australia often have very different foraging behaviors that are passed down to their children. Some might use "sponging", where a dolphin uses a sponge to scrub the seafloor, looking for food, while others might chase their pray towards the shore to trap them. The loss of an individual in this population would result in the loss of a tradition/foraging behavior, and reduce the overall niche diversity within a population. This forest made me think about this because of all the huge, dead trees that met their end due to logging. The loss of individuals prematurely might have very significant genetic consequences and niche effects; these trees were the ones that survived to become big and thus filled specific niches. With the onset of climate change, the reduced genetic and niche diversity among certain populations might make them more susceptible to certain negative effects since the population has become less flexible in their survival strategy. However, short of conducting experiments, there is no way to be sure of this.
Moving on, we saw quite a few exciting species! Right away I noticed the large
Pseudotsuga menziesii, Tsuga heterophylla, and
Abies grandis. In fact, we got to see the largest living Grand Fir alive! Looking at the floor, we saw the Fairyslipper Orchid (
Calpyso bulbosa), which was exciting because I feel like you so rarely get to see any of our terrestrial orchids. Apparently, they are an indicator of dense forest near beaches; I'd have to agree considering where we were! With such dense forests, there must be a lot of competition going on, primarily for light and space. It seems that unless you're a shade tolerant species like
Tsuga heterophylla, there is a lot of pressure to grow quickly and out-compete your neighbors or you face getting shaded out. However, disturbances like fire and wind will often get a chance to individuals that would otherwise be suppressed by more competitive individuals. Anyways, it seems like the Latin name for the Fairyslipper Orchid,
Calpyso bulbosa, hints at its root structure; they have an underground corm that they sprout from. This made me a little tempted to dig some up for my garden, but I'm pretty sure collecting on National Park grounds without a permit is illegal...
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| Hard to tell without anything for scale, but this is the biggest Abies grandis around. |
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| Calypso bulbosa |
As we moved through the forest, we came to several clearings, or breaks in the canopy cover. I imagine this was probably due to wind action, as fire has probably been suppressed in this area due to the proximity human settlement. A different variety of species dominated this area. There were a number of grasses but none of them were in flower, and I'm not good at identifying grasses anyways. Beyond the grasses, there were also a few species in the Boraginaceae! This made me super stoked, because I work with the Boraginaceae in my lab; I do genetic analyses of the genus
Hackelia, also known as Stickseed or Wild Forget-Me-Not. My current project is to try and figure out how species within the genus are related because this has never actually been determined, and only speculated upon. However, my project aside, the Boraginaceae we saw looked a lot like the plants I work with, so that was really exciting! The biggest way they differ is the fruit structure; the fruits of
Myosotis are smooth while those of
Hackelia have spikes (mammal dispersal). Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to identify the species of
Myosotis, although I suspect it is
Myosotis sylvatica, which is the escaped cultivated Forget-Me-Not.
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| Myosotis spp. Look at how the petals turn from purple to blue! |
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| White phenotype of the same Myosotis species. Perhaps it is a recessive trait? |
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To give you an idea of how similar Hackelia and Myosotis are,
here is Hackelia floribunda, one of my species that I am sampling |
Moving back into the forest, I was amazed by the crazy diversity of fungi! This made me realize that a large portion of the diversity in the forest is tied up in fungi, and is often invisible to the eye. We saw things like
Orange Peel Fungus, Elephant Saddle Mushroom, Artist's Conk, and a bunch of others we had no idea what they were! Gahhhhh, I need to take mycology! Fruiting bodies aside, there are a number of mycorrhizal fungi in the soil, creating a symbiotic relationship with some of the trees like Douglas-Fir by providing water and nutrients in exchange for sugars from the photosynthetic tree. This network of fungi often connect trees and might be the cause of how some trees try to recover from being cut down; the fungi is shunting resources from other nearby trees to help the stressed tree recover. The forest truly is alive! Other fungi facilitate other plant species by breaking down dead plants and trees, and thereby releasing important nutrients back into the soil. For example,
Lettuce Leaf Lichen grows in the tops of trees, living off of pure organic matter accumulated through time in tree tops (especially those that developed decadence), and when wind blows it out of the tree, it acts as a Nitrogen rich fertilizer for other plants. Other types of epiphytic moss create interesting relationships with their hosts, like Bigleaf Maple; the moss takes out sugars from the tree, but retains moisture during the summer, which allows the maple to send small roots into the moss to collect water during stressful times.
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| Elephant's Saddle Mushroom |
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| Orange Peel Fungus |
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| Artist's Conk |
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| Unknown Fungi |
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| Yet another Unknown! |
Besides the amazing amount of mushrooms we saw, there were quite a few other cool plants I'd never seen before! We saw
Palmate Coltsfoot (Petasites palmatus), Stream Violet (Viola glabella), Trailing Yellow Violet (Viola sempervirens), Devil's Club (Oplopanax horridus), Vanilla Leaf (Achlys triphylla), Western trillium (Trillium ovatum), False Soloman's Seal (Maianthemum racemosum), False Lily-of-the-Valley (Maianthemum dilatatum), Twinflower (Linnaea borealis), Vine Maple (Acer circinatum), Trailing Blackberry (Rubus ursina), Black Gooseberry (Ribes lacustre) and an unknown Brassicaceae. Whew! Despite all the time we took to identify plants, it was super fun! I don't really get a whole lot of opportunities to try to identify new plants, so it was refreshing to test my identification skills again. Once we got back from our trip, I tried keying out the unknown Brassicaceae that we saw, but it was rather difficult for a couple reasons. First, I didn't have a specimen in front of me and I realized I didn't get that good of a look at it (for example, I didn't look at the basal leaves). Second, keying out things in the Brassicaceae is heavily dependent on the fruits, and none of the plants I saw were fruiting yet. However, my limited description is as follows: 4 parted, 6 stamens (4 long and 2 short), petals about 1 cm long, pale pink. Leaves are compound with 3 leaflets. Leaflets are entire and linear in shape. With this knowledge I tentatively identified it as something in the
Cardamine genus, although my confidence level on this is pretty low since my observations were limited.
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| Vanilla Leaf. Smells like vanilla when dried. |
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| False Lily-of-the-Valley |
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| Trailing Yellow Violet |
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| Western Trillium |
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| Black Gooseberry |
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| Our unknown Brassicaceae. Couldn't find it in Pojar! |
In terms of avian diversity, we saw quite a few things! Although initially all we saw was an
American Raven and a
Winter Wren, we soon saw others. One of the more fascinating things we saw was a pair of
American Dippers; we saw this bird jump into the river, surface near a rock in the middle of the creek, jump onto the rock, and then fly into a hole in the bottom of a huge dead log that spanned the creek. I presume that it was the location of its nest, since it had food going in, and left empty-beaked on the way out. The way it exited was quite amusing; rather than fly out, it simply plopped back into the river and popped out somewhere downstream. This is a great example of how the great trees of the PNW act as facilitators even after their death; they can provide essential habitat to birds. They can also alter the flow of rivers and streams to make them more suitable for salmon. Yet another example is when we saw a
Pilated Woodpecker which was pecking away at a snag tree, either looking for insects or some prime real estate. Closer to the Naturebridge campus we saw birds that were more edge specialists:
Dark-eyed Juncos, White-crowned Sparrows, and
Stellar's Jays. This might be another example of facilitation, albeit by humans. By creating more edge and laying down grass, we create more foraging habitat for these specific species. In fact, we saw the Stellar's Jay picking up sandwich crumbs left by one of the Naturebridge workers. In a similar manner, we saw
Black-tailed Deer taking advantage of all the grass around the campus. I imagine that being in proximity to the campus also afforded these deer limited protection for predators. We didn't see much predation, although we did see the remains of a deer skull. Perhaps a cougar got it?
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| Stellar's Jay taking advantage of some scraps... |
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| Black-tailed Deer |
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| Dark-eyed Junco |
We also saw other examples of some interesting interactions. For example, we saw the mutualistic interaction of a
Bumblebee pollinating some Salmonberry flowers. We also saw a
Douglas Squirrel eating some sort of fruit. It is likely that it was assisting dispersing the seeds of that plant, either through messy eating or by storing it for later and forgetting where they stored it!
Overall, the forest was quite amazing and magical, and left me with a lot to think about. But there is another part to this!
Date: Sunday April 28th, 2013
Weather: Cloudy, intermittent sun, windy
Temperature: ~48 degrees F
Time: 10:00 PM to 12:00 PM
Location: Salt Creek Tide Flats (Olympic Peninsula)
Overall, I found that species identification in this area was rather difficult. I haven't really taken any classes that cover marine ecology or species identification, outside of Fundamental of Ecology, so I felt like I didn't know what to look for. But after following other people around, I kind of figured out how to look at things, even if I wasn't sure what I was looking at. That being said, we saw a lot of really amazing things that I didn't think we'd see!
Before we even got to the shore, I saw some
Broad-leafed Stonecrop chilling against the side of a cliff face. I was hoping to see some earlier in the trip, but here they were!
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| I love these guys. |
As we approached the shore, we first saw a lot of
Edible Mussels which covered rocks extensively, and were hidden in their calcareous structures. Moving just a little farther inland, we saw
Dall's Acorn Barnicles heavily competing with the mussels. I was surprised to find that I could often walk on the mussels without crushing them. Fairly early on we saw a
Purple Shore Crab; one of the students was silly enough to put their finger directly in their pincer to see if it'd pinch her. As it turns out, it does pinch quite readily, and she gave out a little scream as it gave her a short squeeze. Maybe it just wanted to hold hands?
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| Mussels galore. |
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| Purple Shore Crab, raring to go. |
Moving along, we began to come across a number of anemones, like these Giant Green Anemones. However, there seemed to be quite a few different coloration schemes among different sets of anemones. It seemed like they were similar species, so maybe it was result of air exposure? Or perhaps just a trait passed down to offspring (especially since they are clonal)? For some reason, I imagine that competition between the progeny of an anemone would be extreme because they are exact replicates, and there is no variation in how they take advantage of resources. Although, I suppose that would be based on the assumption that the progeny remains in proximity to the parent, which I don't think is the case.
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| Giant Green Anemone |
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| Another Anomone! |
Also in close proximity to these creatures was some species of
Chiton, which looked like a giant slug, except that it had a hard shell. Apparently they are grazers of the
Green Algae and
Brown Algae that was growing all around, as are the variety of
Limpets that we saw.
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| Chiton! |
In fact, I was amazed at the simple amount of biodiversity that was around. You could just turn over a rock and there would be all sorts of species. It was a little funny because the moment you turned the rock over, all the creatures would start migrating towards the bottom side of the rock again.
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| All I can recognize is the limpet... everything else is some sort of invertebrate! |
Towards what looked like a major flow channel during high tide, we saw some
Giant Feather Dusters, which seemed like worms in long tubes that displayed giant feathers that would catch debris for it to eat. In this way, it is probably facilitating the entire ecosystem by cleaning it up and recycling energy. As we approached a large tide pool, we came across some
Red Algae, and hiding among it was a
Hairy Crab! While I'm not sure if the crab holds so still sometimes that algae grows on it, or that it produces these structures itself, it certainly blends in super well!
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| Can you spot the crab? |
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| There it is if you couldn't find it before! |
In the tide pool, we saw quite a few
Hermit Crabs, but coaxing them out from their shells proved to be quite difficult. Another student was tenacious enough to actually capture a
Tidepool Sculpin. Honestly, I have no idea how she did it because we watched the others in the tide pool swim around and they moved around like bullets.
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| Aw, come on, don't be such a Hermit. Oh wait... |
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| The Tidepool Sculpin |
Heading towards the shoreline, we came across not one, but two
Octopus carcasses. I imagine that they must have died somewhere near the shore and washed up during high tide, as I believe they can survive outside of the water long enough for them to crawl back into the water should they get stranded during low tide. The basis for this belief stems from when I used to volunteer at the Seattle Aquarium; at some point fish began to disappear from some of the tanks. None of the fish in those tanks would eat each other, so we were left wondering what was going on. After a while, the aquarium set up cameras to see what was happening when everyone wasn't around. As it turned out, since the tank for the Octopus was open-air, it would crawl out at night, scuttle across the floor, crawl into another tank, eat to its heart's content, then crawl back. Crazy! That being said, we later saw
Seagulls picking away at their splayed bodies. While it is not predation, it is definitely an example of savaging.
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| Poor guy... |
Finally, we made it to the actual waterline, and there was a noticeable difference in the species here. No longer were there mussels or barnicles, but the rocks were primarily dominated by
Eelgrass and brown algae like
Dead Man's Fingers and some species of
Coraline Algae. To eat all this primary productivity were various sea urchins like the
Purple Sea Urchin. However, this much productivity often produces trophic cascades, and in this case, it does. Sea stars like the
Blood Sea Star and the
Sun Star roamed through the algae and grasses to track their favorite prey of sea urchins.
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| Purple Sea Urchin |
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| Equal Sea Star |
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| Pacific Blood Star |
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| Unknown Sea Star |
Looking back over the landscape, we could see that there were a number of disturbances which had removed a large number of mussels, algae, or barnicles. As Bob Paine mentioned in our guest lecture, these disturbances are typically due to strong wave action, and leaves a patchy matrix much like how fire can effect a forest. The disturbed patches often were of a different color and had a different composition of species, as per succession. However, I didn't manage to see the edge effect of grazers coming in from older, more sheltered matrix to create the bull's eye effect in newly disturbed areas. Perhaps this is because none of the areas I surveyed were recently disturbed enough?
All in all, I was fascinated by the biodiversity we could find at the beach; I didn't think we'd find so much!
Well, that's all for this week. Next week I shall look for some arthropods at my original site!
