ECOLOGY - COMMUNITIES

After arriving on Saturday, firstly at Kingscote Airport and then being driven by Environmental Physiologist Peggy Rismiller to her Pelican Lagoon Research Centre we were first shown around their 'camp'.  The Centre is quite isolated and surrounded by mostly natural bushland.  The buildings have been constructed using local limestone and recycled materials like window frames.  I am staying in a cottage with the male teachers while the female teachers are camping in comfortable tent set ups.  The only electrical power here comes from the sun through the use of photo-voltaic cells.

To learn about the "Community" (in Ecology this term refers to all the things immediately around us that allow an organism, a living thing, to survive) we spent that afternoon learning how to do a transect and quadrats in the nearby bush and also getting our bearings by being shown locations and landmarks in our area so that we don't get lost.

Miss Scott will explain about transects and quadrats in more detail and you will do transects as an activity.

Our transect helped us to discover what plants grow in the area, how common they are and what they look like.  We also looked carefully for tracks and traces of animals.  These could be evidence of digging, animal droppings (scientists call these scats) burrows and tracks.  Also along the transect or within the 1m x 1m quadrats we noted any living things like ants for example.  By recording on paper what we found we start to get an idea of what makes up this particular community.
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ACTIVITY: Miss Scott can help you organise your own transect or quadrat.  You will need:-
a tape measure or metre ruler;
notepaper and pencil;
sample bags to collect plant samples to be identified and
keen eyes!

If you do a quadrat you will also need to estimate a percentage of the area taken up by different plant species.

On Sunday we were shown electronic devices called "I" buttons which are used to record temperature at intervals you can choose by setting them using a computer program.  We split into groups and chose places to put them so that we could learn about how temperature can vary from one place in the landscape to another.  My group put one 30cm above the ground (echidna height) in an unshaded spot near the lagoon (about 1 metre above sea level) and another in a high spot, approximately 30 metres above sea level also in an unshaded spot.  The "I" buttons will record the temperature every 10 minutes for a day or two and then we will collect them and see our data displayed on a computer.

HINT: A FORUM question might be - How would a scientist find this information useful?

** PS Don't forget to put your questions in - I will answer as soon as possible BUT we only have one phone line here so please be patient.

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On Sunday afternoon we were taught how to track down a transmitter hidden in the bush using a reciever and an aerial.  This was great fun and soon we will use this skill to try and locate some echidnas and goannas that have transcievers on or IN them and that are somewhere out in the bush.

The echidnas are captured and then a transmitter glued to their spines - they shed these spines occasionally so they can part company.  On the other hand Peggy surgically implants the transmitters into the abdomen of the goannas so they have these for life!

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BYE FROM KI