lillianniccum's Journal

I observed an Ornate Tree Lizard that I found along my back yard fence. I noticed that these lizards run very fast along the fence when they are approached, which made me think about two things: they are hard to photograph and I have no idea how I caught them when I was younger. This lizard spent most of my observation time perching on either the side or the top of the fence. back flat with hear sticking up in the air, sitting in the sun. Once the lizard poked at a leaf, not sure if it was to eat or not. Mostly, if perched on the fence and pushed its front legs up and down (similar to a push up motion) while sitting in the sun, or moving to a new location.

Function: Lizards are coldblooded reptiles, and spend time sunning themselves to increase their body heat.
Causation: I think the sun would be the stimuli for the lizard.
Development: I am inclined to think that this is an instinctual behavior because it is so prevalent against reptiles, perhaps those that do not sun are those that do not survive.
My explanation for evolutionary history is similar to that of development, I cannot think of something that would distinguish the two.

This assignment was a fun one for me because I have always known that there is wildlife in my backyard and my neighborhood, but I have not appreciated some of it. This gave me the chance to walk around my yard and just look at the nature. I took pictures of bugs or plants that were out of the ordinary and not landscaped into my yard. I even got a couple pictures of a lizard. Sadly, I did not get to see any of the really cool things like a snake or a coyote, but those only come around sometimes. The observations that I made were of things that I see in my yard on a regular basis. I think a place of low diversity is inside my actual house; we have screens and windows and doors, and we do not really keep plants or anything inside. There is the occasional small spider or fly, but nothing like there is outside. I found places of high diversity to be around the perimeter of our yard where we have the most plants and soil.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41180734
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41173357
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41180666
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41180943
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41493927
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41494301

P.S. When I made my observations, I added them to the NatGeo project, but they did not add for some reason, so I am not really sure how that works. On the page, it says observations can only be contributed by certain people.

As a starting point for this task of identifying unidentified organisms, I narrowed my search to the Greater Phoenix area where I grew up. I was hoping that in doing this, some of the observations that came up as needed identification would be ones that I had grown up around and seen numerous times. This was the basis for my first six or seven identifications, most of which were cacti or other desert plants that I was able to identify down to the genus or species. My dad had a landscaping company until I was 8 and we have a lot of these plants around our house, so I was able to use what I saw growing up as my knowledge for identification. One of my observations in the Orange County area was giant kelp, which I was able to identify because I took marine bio last year, and our semester project was to collect, identify, and press seaweed. I was able to specifically identify plants much more easily than animals (in this case mostly bugs), as I have had more exposure to plant classification than insect classification. This made me hesitant to identify species level classification in the grasshopper, cricket, and insect observations. The spider I was able to do relatively easily because we have wolf spiders around my house and I have seen then many times before. For many of these identifications I used my prior knowledge and exposure to these organisms to identify common characteristics and use that as my method for naming these organisms.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35495626
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/27898671
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/35100811
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26088372
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39689277
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40614388
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40479666
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40760894
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40910526
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40998505
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40675205

In my observations of the cottontail, I have noticed a few things about their typical environment. Around campus, they can often be found in the grassy areas on campus, on French Hill, and in the bushes. They also come out in large numbers at night. In places where shelter (bushes, shrubs, artificial structures) is present, they are often harder to see because they like to be covered. In looking at maps of observations of the cottontails, there is a higher frequency of observations in places that are at lower elevations and have a higher human population. It is unclear whether this is because more humans=more observations or because the rabbits have more of a realized niche in areas where humans are present (more water, more grass, more shelter...). The fundamental nice is most definitely a larger area that encompasses a large part of the American southwest, including temperate weather, low elevation, and some source of food and moisture.

This assignment was rather challenging for me as I took photos of multiple plants in different locations over the course of several days and did not manage to find many relevant species for our class. I was able to see and learn about a lot of beautiful new plants, but did not find hardly any of the ones on the list. As far as my methods, I looked up each species on the list to see what it looked like and where it was commonly found. I then took pictures of several plants that I found in nature out and about and photographed them if they were unique or especially if they resembled the ones on the list. I did not necessarily pursue any of these species because I figured that they were fairly common and I would be able to find them without going on a scavenger hunt. However, this apparently was not the best method to approach this assignment with because as I said above, I was pretty unsuccessful. In the future, I will take better note of what the target species look like so I know better what/where to look.