Mushroom Madness

Chicken of the Woods similar to the one that we found.

During the mushroom foray that my group did, we walked around a trail that went past the cemetery. We found four mushrooms, but they were few and far between. I found this to be odd, since the conditions were great. It had rained nonstop for the past two days and wasn't too hot or cold. We found a chicken-of-the-woods mushroom.Chicken-of-the-woods are large, round and orange live shelf-like mushrooms that grow in clusters on dead trees. We also found another shelf-like mushroom growing on a tree. This one was white and soft. It had gills on the underside which, when touched, turned bright yellow. We believed it to be Cantharellus subalbidus (shown below), however it did not have a white spore print.

Cantharellus subalbidus commonly called the white chanterelle.

Something I found interesting about fungi is how useful they are. Fungi are decompose things, which helps clean the environment of dead and dying matter. The penicillin antibiotics are made from penicillin fungi. This is a huge benefit because penicillin can be used to treat pneumonia, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, inflammatory heart disease and a multitude of other ailments. Mushrooms in particular are edible fungi. Some other examples of fungi are molds and single-celled yeasts. All fungi heterotrophic and have cell walls made of chitin.

When you are foraging for mushrooms and pick one, you aren't hurting the mushroom at all. In actuality, what you've picked is the mushroom's fruiting body, where it stores reproductive cells. The actual mushroom is called mycelium, which is a collection of long strands of hyphae, which are underground. Mushrooms are commonly found in forests. They grow on mosses, grasses, trees and decaying logs. They will often sprout 1-3 days after a good rain. An important note when collecting mushrooms is to make sure that you get the entire mushroom. This means you should bring along a shovel or trowel. That way, you not only collect the fruiting body, but the mycelia as well. Also, bring a basket so that when you walk through the woods, spores from your mushroom(s) will fall to the ground and grow new mushrooms.

Example of a Chicken of the Woods spore print.

When classifying mushrooms, it is important to note the color of the mushroom's spores. You'd do this by taking a spore print. Spore prints are conducted by cutting of a mushroom's stem, placing it gills/pores down on a piece of brown paper and putting a cup over it. In time, the spores will fall and you'll be able to see and identify them. Also, when conducting a mushroom foray, you can collect your spores in a paper bag so that they'll fall straight into the bag. The white shelf-like mushroom that we collected had brown spores and the chicken of the wood had a white spore print (see left). Spore prints are vital in making sure that you are correctly classifying your specimen.

When classifying mushrooms, you use a biological key(online key that we used). They can be found in a multitude of books and online keys. A helpful tip for when using a key of any kind is to read carefully. Make sure that you're not skimming, but reading every word carefully. Otherwise, you may mistake and edible mushroom for a poisonous one. My group had issues with being able to stick to the tedious process. There are hundreds of thousands of mushroom species and identifying them often takes a long time. It is very easy to misread a word or skip a step and classify your mushroom completely wrong.

Some take-away lessons I've learned from this experience are a) always have someone double check your work, fresh eyes can really make a difference and b) mushrooms have a lot more than meets the eye (literally). Don't pass up the opportunity to go on a mushroom foray simply because it doesn't sound like fun. I wasn't looking forward to it, but the experience ended up being very interesting. So, with that said, best wishes and happy mushroom hunting!

Yes, Birds Really Are Dinosaurs

After reading the article ”Are Bird Really Dinosaurs?”, I have come to realize that yes, modern day birds are the dinosaurs of our time. Paleontologists have determined that birds are avian dinosaurs and that birds have technically been categorized as reptiles. Birds are descendants of a maniraptoran dinosaur, much like a dromaeosaur. 

The evidence to this statement is overwhelming. Even as early as the 16^th century, biologists observed the incredible similarities between birds and “traditional” reptiles. In 1860, a fossil of an Archaeopteryx lithographica was found in Germany. The find was later deemed the “London specimen” and is a fantastic example of the evolutionary transition from traditional reptiles to birds. The Archaeopteryx is considered to be the oldest known bird. Ratite birds (kiwis, ostriches and emus) are extremely similar to theropod dinosaurs. In addition to that, the reptilian features of birds are numerous. Birds have scales on their feet and their feathers are produced by tissues similar to those of scales. Also, they lay eggs and have similar internal organs. Other similarities include: large orbits, elongated arms, forelimbs and clawed hands and hollow, thin-walled bones although there are a multitude of others. 

Some biologists disagree with this theory, although it is obvious that the evidence is too strong to properly dispute. Many of them claim that the gap in fossil record between the early Cretaceous and late Jurassic periods is too big to make any assumptions. Also, they note on the differences in anatomy which could all be related back to evolution. However, this does not disprove the idea of common ancestry. Also, there are no other possible avian ancestors to fill this void. Others argue that dinosaurs did not have feathers even though there is no evidence to prove or disprove that statement.

Overall, I am a strong believer in the idea that birds are modern-day dinosaurs. Although natural selection may have caused them to over time to become smaller and perhaps behave differently than their ancestors, there is no way to successfully challenge this explanation. Birds that live today have had over 150 million years to adapt and migrate, it is obvious that natural selection would have occurred. Features that birds have today most likely were not there, or were different 150 million years ago which shows clearly evolution in progress. However, the links between dinosaurs and birds are so numerous and strong that I think it is logical and likely that they share common ancestry.

Is it Alive? Investigation Reflection

In the Is it Alive? Experiment, we used many different types of biology available to biologists. We used microscopes, slides, cover slips, bromothymol blue and methylene blue. They definitely helped answer the question: is it made of cells? Also, they helped identify whether or not the unknown was converting energy. The bromothymol blue changed color which made it known that carbon dioxide was present while the methylene blue made it easier to see the cell walls. One problem that we encountered during our investigation was that we at first didn't think that our unknown was growing in soil, since growth is a long process. So, we had to wait and keep watching in order to see if anything would happen. I would have given us a longer period of time to watch our unknown grow. If we had that opportunity, we would've known it was a flower and possible which type of flower.

The independent variables in our investigation were the environments we tried to grow the unknown in: fresh and salt water, soil and sand. The dependent variables were the amount of growth shown in each environment. Our control for the experiment was the unknown left plainly in a plastic cup with nothing in it and no covers. The stimulus in our experiment was water. Each environment had water and it did cause growth, without it, the unknown may not have grown at all. I would call our conclusion that our unknown was alive, a fact. While it was already known that plants are indeed living organisms, we simply proved it in our experiment. What I've learned from this lab is that making sure that everyone is working and not simply watching can make a huge difference and also not to make any assumptions before conducting your experiment because it is likely that you may be wrong.

Click to View the Is it Alive? Powerpoint