The fall semester is winding down and this past Thursday, November 13th, I was only able to spend a short time viewing the contents of my micro-aquarium. I realized that time would be limited because of all other studies needing to be done for other courses, so I put a plan together for this particular encounter. My goal for this viewing was to concentrate more on the non-motile organisms, the plants. When the plants where placed into the aquarium, they were not in the best health, but today, I am glad to say they are much greener than when they were first introduced. They each have new growth and have rooted throughout the limited soil that was added.
Each day that I had an opportunity to view the contents of the aquarium, I continually checked the Utricularia gibba,(McFarland, 2014). The reason that I focused on this particular plant was because it is carnivorous. In the previous four opportunities, I did not see any organism that had been trapped by the plant, but this past Thursday, my luck had changed. Sure enough, there was an organism caught in one of the plants traps. This organism looked like some type of worm that I had not previously seen in the environment, but with it being encased in the sac created by the plant, it was hard to tell a whole lot about the organism other than it was large (in terms of a micro-aquarium), it was not happy to be in there, and it did not appear to be getting out.
I have seen many living and dead algae while studying this assignment, but have not taken the opportunity to catalog all the abundant life in this aquarium. What I have observed and cataloged in my mind however, is the diversity and harmony of life. Each organism serving a purpose in order for everything to thrive. This will be the lesson that I take with me from this project.
Bibliography:
McFarland, Kenneth [Internet] Botany 111 Fall 2014. [cited November 16, 2014]. Available from http://botany1112014.blogspot.com/
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