Eco Evo 1st iNaturalist Walk

For my nature walk I decided to walk around the outskirts of the Newton campus. The Newton campus is surrounded by woods and you can walk through and around these woods in various parts of the campus. I went on the walk after dinner from about 6 until 7. It was around dusk so the sky was very pretty as the sun was setting. It was also starting to get a little cooler. As I walked, I noticed a lot of trees that made up the majority of the woods. I also saw fern-like plants at various points along my walk. One plant that I saw had a red colored stem and a few red and green leaves on it. I thought that was very unique and was worth taking a picture of for an observation. I also saw what I think was berries on a plant. They were a dark purple/black color. I wondered if they were poisonous and whether or not animals can eat them. I heard a few times during my walk scuffling in the bushes and saw leaves move around that area. I am assuming animals like squirrels and bunnies were probably the result on that. I could not snap a picture of an of the animals as they ran off when I can near. As I walked, I kept thinking back to class and how these species have adapted to these specific conditions in the Newton woods. It took generations and only the fittest species survived to reproduce and formulate the plants that we see now. I wondered if there was ever a bottleneck incident where only a few kinds of these species survived and shifted the gene frequencies. I also wondered how closely related some of these species were to each other. A lot of the plants and shrubbery looked very similar but could have experienced convergent evolution where they are not closely related but have evolved separately to have similar traits.

Publicado el septiembre 30, 2022 06:14 TARDE por ellengallagher