Bee Reflection

                           Bee Reflection

     The Boston Honey Bee Company is located in MA, GA, FL, and NY. They have about 2,200 hives in each state. The Honey Bee Company is owned by a small family which started in 1996. What he talked about was that bees are slowly dying year to year. Bee population is decreasing due to habitat destruction, pesticides, and lack of pollen/nectar. Our guests speaker also talked about different type of bees: Honeybees, Mason bees, Bumble bees, Yellow jackets, Wasps, and Hornets. Honeybees is where we get most of our honey and they collect pollen. They are controlled by a queen-bee and without her they whole hive is basically useless and then stress out. Yellow jackets adapt to colder weather but sadly they don't produce honey. Wasps sting you a lot repeatedly. Hornets are they most aggressive type of bees and are very dangerous.

     Honeybees are important to environmental science because they can produce pollen and nectar in large amounts. They keep our flowers alive and healthy. But sadly the bee population is dying out and their isn't much left of them. Honeybees provide us with food and without them who would get the job done? The only thing keeping them alive is the Japanese knob weed and purple loose strife. The only big problem with the 2 invasive plant species is that the Japanese knob weed can get really big and is a huge pain to get it removed.

scrAPES #15 Coffee spill: Thousands of coffee cans wash up in Indialantic

scrAPES # 15 Coffee spill: Thousands of coffee cans wash up in Indialantic
Published: 12/8/15
By: J.D Gallop

     This article talks about how a beach outside of Double Tree hotel was filled with thousands of coffee grains, Cafe Bustelo just lying in the shore of the beach. U.S coast guards and a marine science technicians where taking a stroll along the beach looking for any other hazardous or bacteria things along the beach. They believe that a cargo ship filled with thousands of Cafe Bustelo accidentally fell out the ship and into the ocean making its way to the beach. Luckily all they found was just the coffee grains and nothing else.

     The reason why I chose this article is because there is now a beach that could of been contaminated with other chemicals that could of poisoned us or sea animals. Cargo ship drivers need to be more careful while shipping imported goods to one place to another. What caught my attention was that their was people carrying garbage bags helping picking up and cleaning the beach.

     This article is important to environmental science because the beach is being contaminated with coffee grains which has a major affect on the beach. What many other people should start doing now is continue on helping picking up the remaining cans and cleaning the coffee grains out of the beach. If everyone helps then the beach would be clean in a day or two.

Parking Lot Data

                                Parking Lot Data

     In the Parking Lot Ecology lab we counted how many cars where in that specific brand (ex: Toyota: 18 cars, Honda: 9 cars, Nissan: 7 cars e.t.c). Then we used the Shannon Weiner equation to find the species richness, species evenness and its index. We mostly use Shannon Weiner Index to measure the likelihood of the next individual that will be the same species as the previous sample. After we collected out data we used the Shannon Diversity Index (which is the equation) to figure out if the species diversity would be high or low.

    What we did was we counted how many car brands was in the parking lot of EBHS. Each car brand was its own species. We divided the parking lot into 2 communities, community A and B. The community that was most diversity was B because it's Shannon Weiner Index (H) value was 2.59 and community A had .80 The most dominate species in community A was a Toyota because I believe of popularity. Toyota is a well known brand and it's very famous around the world. Also community B also had the same dominate species which was Toyota. Some opportunities for errors in our methods was that some cars can be emigrating and immigrating into the parking lot. Also many groups can argue with the color of a car. (Some groups chose to count the cars in colors) The species richness in community A was 16 and in B it was 20. The species evenness in community A was 2.01 and in B it was .87

scrAPES#14 There are sharks living in a volcano this is not a drill

scrAPES# 14- There are sharks living in a volcano this is not a drill
Published: July 10th 2015
By: Amelia Urry

     This article talks about how there are different types of sharks living in a volcano. Kavachi is an active volcanoes in the Solomon islands where they are hammerheads and silky sharks living in the bottom of the volcano. The Solomon island is a very dangerous place where some drivers got mild skin burns from acid water. There is also methane gas and carbon dioxide bubbles rising from the volcanoes and intoxicating the air. How is there animals living under the volcanoes? What will happen once the volcanoes erupts? Do the animals even know that they are under a volcano that can potentially erupt?
   
     The reason why I chose this article is because volcanoes can erupt any minute. There is animals in the bottom of the volcanoes and if it erupts all of the animals will die. Also if the volcanoes keeps producing methane gas or carbon dioxide it will effect the air making it not safe for humans to be around that volcanoes. Is it even possible for an animal especially sharks to survive under those types of conditions?

     This article is import rant to environmental science because there has to be a way to get those sharks out of that volcanoes. Also there has to be another way to stop the methane gas and carbon dioxide rising from the seafloor vents. If this all continues eventually the volcanoes will erupt making it harmful to live and there is a high chance that the sharks will die.

Save An Animal Reflection

                               Save An Animal Reflection

     A local animal that needs my help are the baby tortoises. Baby tortoises haven't been seen on Galapagos Island in over a century. If these tortoises continue to not be seen they will soon be extinct. The reason why these tortoises where going extinct was because rats where eating the eggs making the baby tortoises unable to hatch. But in 2012 biologist used helicopters to launch a poison only attracted to rats killing every single rat on the island.

     Now we begin to see many baby tortoises in the Galapagos Island. 10 new baby tortoises has been spotted and with these 10 new babies tortoises can now be saved from extinction. Tortoises reproduce by mating with a male and a female then weeks later the female lays eggs. One single mating can result to 30 eggs but these eggs wont be laid into one clutch. Once the female lays eggs she will need to nurture the egg and keep it safe until it hatches.
 
     What I can do to help is start to take extra good care of these eggs and help the tortoise with the eggs. Also once the eggs are hatched I can nurture the tortoise into not dying. I can feed the tortoise and give it a safe home. Once it's big enough that it can survive on it's own I will put the tortoise back to where it belongs. Later the tortoise will live in its original habitat and be ready to live on its own. What interests me the most is that tortoises are at the urge of extinction. It breaks my heart to see an animal being ready to be extinct because those animals bring so much to our world. They feed off of other animals that may cause problems to Earth. What surprises me the most is that scientists actually found baby tortoises meaning that there is a sense of hope still living with the tortoise family.  

Aquariarum Reflection

                               Aquarium Reflection 

     

     When I was walking up and down the ramps what fascinated me the most was the big tank in the middle. There was lots of biodiversity on that one tank itself. I saw many different types of fish, sharks, and a couple of turtles. I believe there where more than 2,000 different animals living in that one tank. Its amazing to see how different animals can live in that one tank and how they all get along so easily. When I went all the way to the top to the tank they gave a small presentation about the turtle. The turtle eats many different types of veggies like Brussels sprouts and lettuce. A new thing I learned was that the turtles are as old as the aquarium, they have been there since the first day the Aquarium was established.  

     The biodiversity of the tank is important to our planet because that tank has now saved a little more than 2,000 animals. All of those animals now have a home where they can be safe and loved. Biodiversity is a big key to our planet because the different types of animals will help the environment in some sort of way. If we killed/ gone all of the birds in our planet then what would happen to the animals that prey on birds? What would happen to all of the bugs or little animals that hurt our environment that can only be killed by birds. That is why the variety of different species affects our planet because if we remove a specific animal then everything would end up changing

     The reason why I thought the biodiversity in the huge tank in the middle of the aquarium was interesting, was because it was very unique to look at. Seeing many different types of animals and how they interact with each other grasped my attention. Their body movement with other aquatic animal, the way each different animal behaves and moves was very interesting to me.