Animal Journal

Animal Journal

I tried to make a food web map for my cockroach specimens.
It seems that man has taken the job or role as the producer. But when the cockroach went thru dry times it actually did try to consume the fungus that grew on its droppings. My brother also told me that he had seen the wasp that parasitizes the cockroach. The roaches where paralyzed when the wasp managed to lay eggs on them. He said that the wasps only came after he and his mates had gathered a considerable size of roaches in a 1 gallon ice cream can.

Plant Journal

September 20, 2008

I had just finished doing another survey of the animals that live in the whole tomato garden and I got these results

Spider – 1 / 29 plants

Whitefly – 432 / 4 plants surveyed

Thrips – 17 / 4 plants surveyed

Wasp – 1 / 29 plants

Ladybird beetle – 0 / 4 plants surveyed

Leaf Curl Damaged – 6 plants

Plants with leaves affected by white spots – Thrips damage – 4 plants

Leaf Hopper burns – 1 plant only 5 leaves where damaged

Tomato Blossom End Rot – 4 plants had fruits with this problem

I compared these results with data I had collected on week 5 and observations done on week 7 and week 2. I plotted them together with my current data this was the curve plotted thru the use of excel.

It seems as when the plants grew older they started to also accumulate more white flies. The ladybird population also became zero at certain point between week 7 and 15 they may have gone else where for food.

September 25, 2008

I finished doing most of the adjustment on the plant ecology journal. I went back and re-examined my data on plant height and plotted the change in tomato plant height using excel and a little slope assignment for the missing height data and I came up with this graph.

Suprisingly when I compared the graph to the time it took for the plant to start producing flowers and consequently grow fruit I find out that the buds appeared at around week 7. The material in the BIO A module tells us that a large amount of the energy available to the plant goes into development of reproductive organs and cells. The slow down on the graph on week 6 could indicate this preparation for flowering. The fastest growth rate for the plant is seen in week 4 based on the data collect this is followed by the slow down but still continual growth of the plant.

This is the food web diagram I prepared for my ecology handbook.

Week 14: German Cockroach Dissection

Week 13 was spent most of the time doing a lot of reading and note taking for the animal dissection journal. I began to wonder how similar does the internal structure of my american cockroach is to a german cockroach so I went in search of german cockroaches. I immediately noticed that they where easier to find than the american cockroach just a bit more tricky to catch. I took two samples. And opened them up.

They have the same structure and even have better looking internal organs than my american cockroach.

The body fat is also coloured white and is partially soluble in alcohol. I also noticed that they don't stink as much as my american roaches or perhaps I was maybe lucky enough to have obtained samples that didn't stink.

We can see the pharynx, oesophagus, crop, gastric caeca, ventriculus, malpighian tubules, colon and rectum in this sample. The only thing that was quite obvious when I did this dissection was the degree of difficulty making the ventral cuts on the abodmen since the sample was only around 1.5 cm long. Perhaps the german cockroach would make a suitable test subject for anyone doing studies on cockroaches since they need a relatively low space for their habitat. 

Plant Journal Week 15

I did a tally of the number of fruits per each plant. There are 29 plants all in all. As of the 15th week we have a total of 849 unripe fruits and 113 ripe fruits so a total of around 962 fruits are present for the 29 plants. 

Of the 34 plants I noticed that even those plants who where affected by the yellow leaf curl virus still managed to carry their fruit to term the data from the sick plants show that there are 3-8 fruits for the sick plants.

This was the first harvest for the 29 plants in the tomato plot when I weighed them it was around 4.48 kg in total weight. So each fruit has an average weight of 154 grams. 

I decided to check out the number of seeds present per fruit. I took 10 samples at random from the pile of 962 fruits that was harvested from the tomato plants. I cut the fruits in half and start to do a count of the number of seeds.

Seed Count Data Set

53 60 54 62 83
64 33 70 28 68

Data from the seed count tells me that there is an average of 57 seeds in one fruit this has a standard error of around 5 seeds. If I used the average number of seeds from the count I did and multiplied it by 962 I would come up with 54,834 seeds for the whole 4.48 kg harvest and it is only coming from 29 trees.

I also noticed that there are only 2 out of 10 fruits which are 3 lobe fruits. So that gives us a probability of 80% that the harvested fruit will have two lobes and 20 % that it is 3 lobe fruit. 

The immense number of seeds produced by the plant may indicate that it is the certain kind of plant that may end up as food for animals since it has a huge number of offspring in order to perpetuate the species. 

Animal Journal Week 11 - 12

First Dissection Week 11

I have been doing a lot of work on the dissection journal for the past four weeks.  The original dissection subjects I used where my american cockroaches. I had read somewhere that these animals needed to exposed to CO2 to put them to sleep and make it more manageable. I decided to use the house hold refrigerator.  I placed my subject in the blue box and sent them to slumber in the refrigerator. 

I then removed the roach from the refrigerator unit and found my specimen stiff and hard. So I decided to reanimate it using hot water and a heating pad.

Once the animal was heated and seemed tender enough to use for the activity I noticed that its antenna was moving and feet were also kicking. So I decided to finally mount it on the cork board in fear that it may recover. These animals are really amazing.  

For the first dissection I made I decided to go and look at the digestive tract of the animal and any other structures present. I actually tried to cut the body at the middle.  The problem was that I had damaged one of the organs.  So I had to repeat the same procedure on my second dissection.

The second dissection went well I got another specimen and had cut the exoskeleton at the one side but I didn't do the other this was another problem since the fats tend to cling to the attached portion. I could now I dentify the organs and they werent damaged. But the smell from the first and second dissection was really bad like fish gone bad. I had to dowse the speciment in alcohol to reduce the stench. 

My new problem with the second dissection was that I had not seen the respiratory, circulatory and nervous structures.  I tried to look at other resources from the net and found that some readings said that I could go in dorsally or ventrally it depends on what I would like to see. 

Third Dissection  Week 12 

I decided to do my third dissection dorsally and I followed the same procedures and still saw that the roach moving even after 15 minutes in the freezer.  The picture below is the dorsal dissection of the american cockroach. 

I found it easier to do the positioning of the scissors for the dorsal cut. When I had cut the middle of the dorsal section of the cockroach the crop just went out thru its back. I had to hurry up and cut a larger portion or risk damaging the organ when it gets squeezed.

The organs where exposed easily than in the ventral dissection but I realized that the nervous fibres and respiratory system resides in the dorsal section. 

So my efforts were all for nothing. I decided to make some more research for the dissection methods to expose the systems of interest to me. 

I started doing the write up for the dissection manual after the second botched dissection and had researched that digestive system of the cockroach is also called the ailmentary canal. It consists of the saliva ducts and glands, mouth, oesophagus, crop (gizzard) ,  proventriculus(grinder), gastric caeca(enzyme producer), ventriculus (Stomach), colon (Water retention) and rectum (waste disposal). 

I also tried to look at my previous samples and found out that most of the tissue of the first and second dissected specimens had shrunk apparently like us roaches also are composed of water.  The stink from the samples was far worse than that of the newly dissected sample. So I guess that all the labeling work and drawing should be done directly after the dissection. 

I also noticed that proventriculus is the only bulge on the dried up specimen. 

Week 13 - Week 14 

After a long wait the fruits have finally ripened so it takes 14 weeks for the whole cycle of life in a tomato to restart. It takes 8-9 weeks for the plants to develop the fruits and another 5-6 weeks for the fruits to ripen and be ready to disperse its seeds.  In one of the blog entries for the plant journal I have managed to dissect a tomato fruit and I had asked why it had the jelly stuff around the seeds I now realize that this could serve as buffer between the seed and the enviroment such as the gut of an animal. 

The tomato plants are now around 167 cm to 200 cm high. These plants are still growing despite bearing fruit. Notice that in the second picture the plants at the end near the shed have grown higher than the rest. What I noticed is that in the morning these plants had beed shaded by the shed roof they only recieved light of equal amount to the rest of the plants at around 9-10 am. It seems that this has triggered the growth of the plant to go into over drive compared to the others.

In the week 13 I also managed to look at yellow leaf curl problem. I noticed that the curling problem could be related to an enlargement of the vascular tissues of the leaf. A normal leaf has the transport tissues of around 0.5 - 1 mm in affected tissues it is around 2 - 2.5 mm in diameter so there could be an abnormality introduced by the virus on the leaf. I tried to look at the normal leaf and diseased leave with a 100x and 450x microscope I managed to borrow from the microbiology lab at work. But it seemed to be the same. I also noticed that some of the plants that have been affected have gotten better. 

Week 12 Flowers Dissection

For the 12th Week of observation I shifted my attention to the flowers of my tomato plants. I asked two questions what do they look like where does the ovum rest and where does the sperm rest. I know that the tomato uses sexual reproduction to form the seed but the structure of the flower is something that is unknown to me. So I went to the garden took samples of the flower.  

Un-opened flower bud. 

This next picture is a flower cut in half.  It reveals a symmetrical pattern.  Note that there is the presence of separate sepals and petals. The stamen (at the middle looks like a yellow petal) is located beside the pistil. So the flower is a complete flower since there are male and female parts present. 

I decided to remove the female part and I found it to be inside the sepal. This could be the reason why the blossom still is connected to the growing fruit even at three weeks from the time it blossomed. Since the growing fruit would tend to push the withered blossoms down and outward. It would also explain why the flower points downward since if it where upward then the vascular connection could be stressed further by twisting it. 

I noticed that the remaining fruit with the blossom end rot had actually began to ripen. But the other fruits still remained unripe. I believe that the problem may have triggered this ripening but I wont be quite sure without additional materials.

Plant Journal Week 11 Entry

Week 11

I started to check the status of the plants who were transplanted in weed infested areas. I noticed that these plants had more leaf damage but still managed to bear fruit.
Most of the insects that made the plant their home settled on the leaves of the plant typically under the leaf and if the leaf was shriveled they settled inside the leaf.


This leaf was folded by an aphid.



An aphid on top of a green tomato fruit. There are also insect bites on the stem of the plant (dark spots)



Leaf underside is covered with web like structures that suggesting that some insect has lived here.

There are also a healthy number of white flies in the plants both in the controlled environment and the weed infested location.

The fruits from the tomato plants that where transplanted to the weed infested location didn't seem to have developed problems but only a sample of the ripe fruits will tell us if they are going to be healthy.

Some of the plants in the controlled environment have developed a virus called Leaf Curl Virus this is seen on the picture of the lower right set of leaves are all curled up. This virus is most probably carried by the whitefly.

Some of the tomatoes fruits in the controlled environment have developed a problem called blossom end rot. The picture below shows us the affected fruit.


According to the literature blossom end rot is common problem of tomato fruits it stems from calcium deficiency in the soil or with irregular moisture levels. I can remember that during the previous weeks it was raining quite often so the moisture level could be the cause.

I took one of the affected fruits and cut it in half and saw this image.


I started to see that the portions of the fruit in-charge of distributing the nutrients seem to be more affected by the problem. I decided to check out if there was an effect on the healthly looking immature seeds, so I cut up one see and took a photo and found that it seemed to be quite healthy.

Week 8, 9 and 10 Animal Journal Entry: Experiment Gone wrong

I saw a post on one of the forums that Roaches can live without water for only 7 days. I decided to test this for Week 8. I gave them their last meal for the week and gave them water and food after 1 week.  After 5 days there was no food on the plate and the tissue was bone dry. I noticed that  my small nymph roach had was missing. I finally found it remains amidst all the rubbish. It had sadly passed away while the rest scurried on. I noticed that some of the growing fungus had disappeared it seems that my subjects weren't picky about their food. So I decided to move the placement of food and water for  another 7 days.  At the end of 14 days an adult roach had died totally swiveled up. The rest looked thin and didn't move too much even if I moved the container they just stayed there. 

It seems that the adult roaches managed to live longer since they had stored more fat and they consumed all the fungus infested food stock in the container and this may have given them some more water during the test. There was also some condensation occurring in the container verified by the water accumulation on the inside of the plastic top cover. Perhaps they also managed to access this one.

I gave the two remaining roaches food and water and returned on week 10. They had an abudant supply of food and water. The two remaining survivors of the experiment had grown a bit plump and where moving quite quickly. 

Reading the module sections on ecology and the effect of animals in their enviroment I began to think about what the cockroach does in nature. The presence of man have caused it to congregate in sites where we store food and live in the dark places of our modern dwellings.  Makes me wonder if cockroaches followed the early humans in their caves. The roach based on my observations is not a predator it belongs to the lower sections of the food chain. It devours materials and could help the decomposition process and it may serve as food for various animals like fish, lizards and spiders. We have lots of lizards and spiders that live in our backyard and I have found roach remains in the spider webs. I believe that roaches tend to distribute spores of fungus when they move around. I've placed a roach in a container with food that didn't develop fungus and some 5 days after I find food pelets had some fungus growing on them. As to what else does the common roach contribute to our ecosystem I'm still thinking about it. Would the ecosystem benefit or get worse from a world without the cockroach? I still don't know. A lot of entomology articles label them as pests particularly the german cockroach. Which is consequently a headache to kill off and has no known communities that exist in wild (http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/entomology/444-289/444-289.html). 

Week 8 to 9 Tomato Fruits Have Developed

Tomato that flowered four weeks ago have started to clump up around week 7. The flower petals started to push forward and swirvel up. This leaves the bottom part of the flower exposed and it starts to swell up.

 

The petals manage to stay connected to the developing fruit for a few days. The fruit is the developing plant embryo. The dried up petals fall off and exposes the underside of the new fruit. It takes 7 to 8 days for the this small fruit to develop into the common green tomato fruit that we see in stores.

 

Larger green fruits take around 14 days to develop. As the plant manages to develop fruits it still makes new flowers. 

I realized that by setting the tomato plants in a plot I actually did limit the number of pests that can affect and spread viruses into the plant so on the 8th week we transplated a few plants into the vacant lot beside the house. I will inspect it and post the findings for the 9th week.

Tomato Plants are Blooming

Just last week after I posted my entry into this blog I visited the plants and saw small buds were already present at the highest stem of the plant. It was flower buds. It was dark already so I couldn't get a decent picture so I shot a couple of pictures later in the week of flower buds.

Large Flower Buds with small new flower buds in the middle.

The Flower Buds where growing out of the stem.

These flowers have bloomed already

I noticed that all the flowers that have bloomed are facing downwards not upwards like other flowers. Perhaps could be a way of making sure that the flowers are protected from water. 

Once a plant starts to produce flower buds it still tries to grow higher and new flower buds appear on new stem growth the above the old flower buds.

I made some measurement on plant height and leaf counts

From the samples I took I noticed that the number of leaves seemed to be linked with the height of the plants. It would be an obvious observation but I noticed that some values didn't match up  like the 9 cm plant with 16 leaves when a 12 cm plant had only 8 leaves. So I decided to look at the position of the plants I noticed that plants in the middle of the plot seemed to have more leaves than those at the ends of the plots. The plants at the end of the plots had the where the largest plants in the plot. It maybe that the competition of plants the middle of the plot for sunlight and nutrients could be driving the larger leaf count.  I'll do more observations to check this out.

Now that the plants have the height of 62 to 108 cm I've noticed that the branches grow in a clock wise direction. It's like the plant has a built in system that determines the angle where its branches would grow that would let its leaves absorb the maximum sunlight available.

Week 4 at the Roach Hotel


I added one more small nymph to the collection of animals on week 2. I allowed it to live in the transfer canister that I use during cleaning. I didn't give it any stuff to eat or drink during its first week in the canister. After I week I found that it was still the same size around 2mm by 4mm. On the third week of capitivity I gave it one pellet at and small wet cotton pad. After 1 week of captivity it was 3mm wide and 5mm long. Unfortunately I wasn't able to take photos of these since the camera was being used in the field by my father.

When I added the new inmate to the hotel on the third week I got a new adult cockroach unfortunately its still a female cockroach. This time when I observed what they did as I added a new creature to the collection the roaches simply crowded together on one spot and groomed themselves I noticed that the first cockroach I got tried to nibble on the new adult roachs' leg. This is new behavior than last time when I added the nymph which was scuttling off the other side.

I also managed to spot the roach egg (ootheca) parasite at week 4. I saw three small flies trapped inside the holding cell. They probably laid eggs on the new ootheca inside the holding pen.

I'll wait for the eggs to hatch and rear them so that I can identity them.

Week 5 at the Roach Hotel: 3 Adults

During the mid week check up of the holding pen I noticed that I had 3 adults in the pen. There where bits of cockroach shells lying around. Apparently the nymph roach I caught was near its molting period and had molted during the week. The new adult roach didn't move around and
seemed quite flat missing bulk exterior it presented just last week. This wings seemed brown in shade rather than black.












Nymph at Week 4















New Adult Roach hanging by the side of the transfer canister. Small nymph on top of the rubbish at the mid right side of the holding pen.

I decided to start doing the anatomy of the cockroaches and looked for sites that provided information on roach anatomy.

I found an informative site in How Stuff Works (really quite surprising since I assumed this site dealt with man made machines not animals.) It described the divisions of the cockroach as divided into 3 major parts head, and thorax, abdomen.












Labeled Picture of my specimen. The front legs are also called Prothoraic Legs, the middle legs are called Mesothoraic Legs and the longest legs are called Metathoraic Legs.

Another site that I found quite useful was Insect Morphology and Anatomy it discussed that most insects follow the same general anatomical plan. This is shown in the illustration below















a b

(a) Image from http://www.earthlife.net/insects/images/anatomy/anatomy.gif (b) Image from http://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/cockroach1.htm

So if followed this information provided in image (a) I would have general idea where the internal parts are going to be. It surprised me that just like us the cockroach has its own femur and tibia. The tarsus is its main climbing implement. When I look at this part of the cockroach I seem to think that there could be small hooks on its tip since I see that the roaches would move it into place when climbing up test its grip if it didn't grip to well they would move it out of the surface and try it on another place until it grips. If it doesn't grip anything they give up and move to another place to test.

The growing nymph is now 5 mm long and around 7mm long. It constantly manages to get over the petroleum jelly barrier.

Another observation that I made was that most of the pellets I placed in the holding cell ended up with mold on it. I think the roaches may be carrying mold spores so I have to test this theory out for the next week of observations.

Plant Journal Weeks 4 and 5

Hi to everyone! Its been a busy week doing the required course work, taking exams and checking papers in my work, preparing lectures. Now I'm free to post the observations made during week 4 and 5 for the plant journal.

In week 4 I decided to do a search on the parts of a tomato fruit and I took a look at an open tomato fruit. I simply took a sharp knife, cutting board and two tomato fruits. I opened one up in the transverse direction and the second one I opened in longitudinal direction. I took photos of each section and labeled the transverse section using MS Paint.









Transverse Direction Longitudinal Direction

The tomato fruit is classified in the USA as a vegetable since it served with the main course not after the main course but botanically speaking it is classified as a berry apparently this issue was taken up and dealt with by the US Supreme court to settle tariff issues concerning the crop. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ ] TomatoThe berry is defined as fleshy with few to many seeded, fruit coat soft and fleshy throughout. [ http://www.victoryseeds.com/catalog/vegetable/tomato/tomato_growing.html ]

The outer skin of the tomato plant is called the Epidermis. The inner core is called the Columella. The white fleshy portion after the Epidermis is called the Vascular Bundle. The extension of the vascular bundle that goes towards the Columella is called the Septa. The chamber filled with gelatinous membranes are called the Locular cavity this is where the seeds are found in. The connection of the Seeds to the Columella are called the placenta Tissue. [ http://www-plb.ucdavis.edu/labs/rost/Tomato/Reproductive/anat.html ] The Tomato fruit I opened up is called a multilocular tomato fruit since it has three locular cavities. Tomato fruits with two locular cavities are called bilocular.

I believe that the placenta tissue and columella provides the necessary nourishment to the seeds as the small plant develops. The presence of gelatinous membrane for the tomato fruit is something I have work on why this is the case when bell peppers have the same structure but no such gelatinous membranes.

Week 5 Observations

The tomato specimens grown in my backyard are now around 69 centimeters high with a stem diameter of 0.9 cm at the base of the plant. Comparing the tomato plants placed the ground and those that where left untransplanted there is a considerable difference in their development. I took another photo of the transplanted plant along side the untransplanted plant.















69 cm Transplanted Plant




Untransplanted and Transplanted Tomato Plants.

















When I compared the data I had on the plants during the past few weeks I come up with a the graph shown below:


I have been wondering about the sudden rise in the slope of the growth. It could be perhaps an issue with my data taking or it is directly proportional to the amount of energy available to build new parts hence there could be a relationship between the leaves present in the plant.







I also checked for the presence of the the cotyledon leaves on my plants and surely enough in most plants the cotyledon leaves where missing. Their stems are still there but the leaves have fallen off. I looked closer and found one plant with the cotyledons still on it. Look the lowest leaf on the picture shown below there is one leave left.




















My father was by chance had been planting other tomato plants for production purposes and they had just emerged a week ago. I took some samples to help me understand more about their root system.































Reference materials told me that the tomato plants have two kinds of roots the tap root and lateral root. The tap root in my specimen is the thick root labeled as B in the photo shown above. The lateral roots are those marked as A they are thinner but longer in this 2-3 week old plant.
































In another 2-3 week old plant I could see that few lateral roots had developed.