Veins in a Prairie Dock Leaf

This morning I stopped at the Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum to check on their Native Pollinator Garden.  The garden looks lush and gorgeous, especially compared to what it looked like one year ago .  I spent about 15 minutes wandering around photographing the garden from various angles - I will share some of these photographs tomorrow.  However, there was one view that really appealed to me.

Veins in a Prairie Dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) leaf

This is a a Prairie Dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) leaf backlit by the sun.  This allows you to see the a elaborate system of interconnected veins running throughout the leaf.  These veins disperse water, sugars, minerals, and other micronutrients throughout the plant. 

All broadleaf plants have these systems of veins running through their leaves.  The ones in the Prairie Dock are easy to see because of the plant's massive leaves.  How big are the leaves?

A Prairie Dock leaf at the Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum

This massive leaf was about 2 feet long and a foot across- most of the other leaves were about 1/2 to 2/3 the size of this giant.

Nesting Bees at the Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum and Saginaw Chippewa Academy

Yesterday I stopped at the Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum to check on their native pollinator garden.  As I walked by their bee nesting box I noticed that several of the cardboard tubes had been filled up and that there were actually bees present in a couple of the tubes.

These tubes can be used by a number of species including Mason Bees (Genus Osmia), Leafcutter Bees (Genus Megachile), and Grass-carrying Wasps (Genus Isodontia).  The bees are what we want, but the wasps are okay too (they do some pollinating).  These are all solitary species that do not nest in colonies.  In the wild, these species typically nest in holes excavated by beetles or in plants that have hollow stems – the nesting tubes are a substitute for these natural cavities. 

Each female Mason and Leafcutter bees gather pollen and place it in a ball at the back of a nesting tube before laying a single egg on the ball of pollen.  She then caps off that section of the tube with a ball of mud (Mason Bees) or a circle cut from a leaf (Leafcutter Bees).  She then repeats this process until the entire tube is full.  The Leafcutter bee will also line the inside of the tube with sections of leaves before collecting pollen.  The larvae will develop inside the tubes, eventually forming a pupae.  They will typically not emerge as adults until next year.

The Grass-carrying Wasp does not gather pollen although she does eat some of it (along with nectar).  Instead she stings crickets, katydids and other insects to paralyze them before stuffing them into the tube.  She then lays a single egg – when the egg hatches, the larvae eat the paralyzed insects.  After laying an egg she seals up the chamber with bits of grass and repeats this process until the entire tube is full.

One other insect that may be seen entering the tubes is a type of bee known as a Cuckoo Bee (multiple genera).  These bees are nest parasites.  They lay their eggs in the nests of other bees.  Because they do not provide for their own young they lack the pollen carrying structures and hairs found on other bees.  They look more like wasps than bees.  I did see what I though was a Cuckoo Bee leave a nest tube at one point.

All of these species are very nonaggressive and will rarely sting unless grabbed or stepped on.

This first picture is labeled to show what I could see in each tube.

 

This second photo shows one of the nesting bees emerging from the tube.  She returned a few minutes later with a load of pollen.

A nesting bee pears out of a cardboard nesting tube at the Mt. Pleasant Discovery Museum

Later in the day I visited the Saginaw Chippewa Academy and found a similar level of activity in the bee nesting box there, including one Mason Bee lining a tube with mud.

One done and a lot more to go - A Mason Bee lines a nesting tube with mud at the Saginaw Chippewa Academy

Life and Death on a Grass Seed

Yesterday afternoon I got bored with sitting at my desk so I grabbed my camera and wandered out into the field behind the office.  I was just about to come back in when something caught my eye.

Female Goldenrod Crab Spider feeding on a beetle while a smaller male spider guards her to deter rival males

That is a beetle (unidentified) being grasped in the jaws of a female Goldenrod Crab Spider (Misumena vatia).  If you look closely, a smaller male spider is perched on her abdomen.  I am guessing that they had recently mated and the male was hanging around to chase away other male spiders.

Native Pollinator Garden Update - Saginaw Chippewa Academy (08 June 2015)

The Native Pollinator Gardens are starting to hit their summer stride - even though its not yet officially Summer.  By the end of the season some plants will be eight feet tall or taller! 

Right now the garden at the Saginaw Chippewa Academy has the following flowers in bloom:  American Alumroot (Heuchera americana), Hairy Beard- tongue (Penstemon hirsutus), Ohio Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis), Wild Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), Canada Anemone (Anemone canadensis), and Sand Coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata).

The bumblebees are particularly interested in the Beard-tongue.  The smaller native bees are swarming the Coreopsis.

Native bee on Coreopsis lanceolata

Saturday Morning at Deerfield Nature Park

On Saturday (06 JUN 2015), a small group from the Chippewa Valley Audubon Club met at Deerfield  County Park for an outing focusing on reptiles and amphibians.  Cool weather limited the number of animals that were active.  However we did find several Painted Turtles (Chrysemys picta) and Map Turtles (Graptemys geographica), lots of Green Frogs (Lithobates clamitans), one Northern Water Snake (Nerodia sipedon).  Our best find of the day?

This...

Wood Turtle carapace (upper shell)

That's the shell of a Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta).  The Wood Turtle is listed as a Species of Special Concern by the State of Michigan.  With this designation, the species receives some degree of protection within the state - it is illegal to collect or possess a Wood Turtle.

 "All right Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." - portrait of a Wood Turtle

Isabella County is near the southern edge of its range in the state, but it seems fairly common along the Chippewa River.  I have frequently encountered this species along the Chippewa River in Mt. Pleasant.  This individual was located about 20 feet from the banks of the river.  If it was any other species I would guess that it was seeking a place to lay eggs, but the Wood turtle often spends time foraging away from water. 

Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta)

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other...

Quiz time!  Name this bird.

Counting Leaves On the Forest Floor

Have you ever walked into a forest and wondered how many leaves were on the forest floor?

I have.

Yesterday, I gave three classrooms from Winn Elementary the task of finding out.

It sounds like a daunting task at first, until you break it down.  The students were visiting the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Audubon Woods Preserve for a forest ecology activity.  Audubon Woods Preserve is approximately 40 acres in size.  For those that don't know, an acre of land is 43,560 square feet - if you think of an acre as a square each side of the square would be about 208 feet long.  So at 43,560 sq. feet per acre times 40 acres, Audubon Woods equals 1,742,400 sq. feet!

Even if the number of leaves in one square foot took only 3 minutes to count (on average) it would take one person 5,227,200 minutes to count all of the leaves in the forest.  That is 87,120 hours or 3630 days or just 20 days short of 10 years.  During those ten years some leaves would decay and others would be added every year so it would be impossible to get an accurate count.

Instead of trying to count every single leaf, what if you count the leaves in individual random sections measuring 1 square foot and use those counts to find an average?  This solution is much less time consuming and will give you a reasonable estimate of the number of leaves.

The students were provided with a one foot square made of PVC pipe and the following worksheet and set to work.

Beginning the counting process on a randomly chosen square foot plot

Students took great care to make sure that they counted every single leaf in their plot

A students with a large handful of leaves that she has counted.

An empty one foot square after all of the leaves have been removed and counted - the leaves were then put back in place

Because the squares were tossed into the forest randomly and in widely separated spots in the forest, the number of leaves in each square varied greatly.  Here are the results from one student group.

This group of students was in one of the sections of forest with denser patches of leaves and their large count (305 leaves) reflects that.  One group in the same class had less than half the number of leaves in their square.  Overall this class came up with an average estimate of 431,725,571 leaves in the 40 acre forest!  This translates to 10,793,139 leaves per acre or approximately 248 leavers per sq. foot of the forest floor.

The other classes came up with estimates of 347,733,268 total leaves (8,693,332 leaves per acre or roughly 200 leaves per sq. foot) and 311,926,814 total leaves (7,798,170 leaves per acre or 179 leaves per sq. foot).

Calculating an average of the 21 test plots used over the course of the day we came up with an average of 363,795,218 fallen leaves on the floor of Audubon Woods.  This translates to 9,094,880 leaves per acre of forest floor or just under 209 leaves per every square foot of the forest floor.