Diario de sophiahedwards

I went for a morning walk around 7am. This walk was very nice because it wasn't too hot outside yet! My goal on this walk was to find different kinds of plants from each group of the land plants - mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, and angiosperms. I was particularly looking out for ferns, because I loved learning about how the ferns produced one kind of spore and how you can sometimes find the sori (clusters of spore) underneath the fern leaf! I was so happy when I found what looked like fern, but unfortunately didn't see any sori on the underside of the fern leaf. In Florida, it is very easy to find angiosperms. They are everywhere! It helps make the environment here so colorful. I took a photo of one of the most common angiosperms here, the bougainvilleas! I also love the photo of the Bird-of-paradise flower. I had previously known about the importance of pollinators with angiosperms, but it was very interesting to learn the more in-depth explanation of angiosperm-pollinator co-evolution. I had no idea that bees had hair-like stuff on their backs to help carry the pollen. With this information in mind, I was super excited when I saw a bee buzzing around one of the flowers I passed by on my walk! I was so lucky to get a photo, and this has to be my favorite photo for my observations. If you zoom in closely on the second to last photo of the Beach Naupaka, you'll see a bee hard at work pollinating the little white flower. Unfortunately, I had a harder time finding mosses, because I'm sure it's easier to find them in damp forests. I will also be on the lookout for more gymnosperms next time!

Hi! This morning I woke up and went on a walk on the beach. It wasn't too hot outside yet because the sun was still rising - which was really nice! It got hotter towards the end of my walk around 7:30am. I really love taking walks early in the morning because there are less people. Usually, I walk on the street but this time I decided to go down onto the sand, because I thought I'd find more interesting organisms! Unfortunately, I had a harder time finding fungi and lichen until the end of my walk. At the end of my walk, I saw this rock that had massive discoloration, and it looked like it potentially had fungi or lichen on it! I thought that the washed up wood could potentially have some more obvious fungi, but they were harder to spot. Even though this is dramatic, I was slightly nervous to get super close to fungi after seeing the video of the Cordyceps fungi turning the ants zombie-like! I saw a lot of photoIithoautotrophs - the algae! I hadn't previously known they were protists. I included a bunch of interesting photos of algae and "broad-leaved gulfweed" that I found! Algae is super common to find on these beaches, and it reminds me of the red tide we experience often here. I also grabbed a photo of the green-looking algae since it is cool to differentiate it from the red! I find it interesting that some green algae at edible. Most of the algae I saw contained the red pigment, phycoerythrin. I saw so many different types of birds, so I just had to link those observations to this journal entry! The yellow-crowned night-heron was not happy I was taking photos of it and turned its head and proceeded to fly right at me! It was a funny experience.