ABI 198 Section B - First day of class!

 Quail Ridge Natural Reserve Adventure

ABI 198 Section A

April 7th, 2025

Today, we visited Quail Ridge Natural Reserve. This was our second trip to a field site in our quest to find a unique and broadly relevant research topic! We spent the day observing all the nature and organisms we passed on our hike to see if we could find some ideas for our research. 

Here are the minutes for today:

• 10 am: Meet at parking lot 26
• En route, Marshall pointed out some other potential field sites we could explore next time.
• 10:30–10:40 am: Reach Quail Ridge Natural Reserve
• Got an introduction about the reserve from Marshall's friend and fellow researcher, Ross
• 11:10-11:15 am: Started our descent down into Decker Canyon
• 11:15 am-12:55 pm: We observed the fauna, local wildlife, and the small experiments set up (the boards and the twig bee houses). As we waited for Marshall, Manu, Grace, and Chloe to pick us up in the vans, everyone else brainstormed ideas based on what we observed today.
  

• 12:55 pm: After a small announcement about the to-do list for our next meeting. We started returning to campus and made a little pit stop to see the Glory Hole. We saw some fish that looked eerily similar to catfish and a Canadian Goose. 
• 1:55 pm: We reached campus and said our goodbyes

Some of the ideas we discussed involved working with vertebrates, such as the snakes we saw or the turtles in the arboretum. We discussed the feasibility of manipulating the temperature of the snake's environment and whether that would impact their sociability.

Here are some pictures I took of everyone while they were doing their observations and some that you amazing photographers sent in:

P.S. I wanted to include at least one picture from everyone who sent them on Slack; be prepared to be bombarded with a bunch of pictures with captions, lol 

"The Glory Hole"

"Brainstorming/Waiting"

"Solo Observations pt.1"

"Solo Observations pt.2/Tick discovery"

"Solo Observations pt.3"

"Sunbathing cuties :)"

"a creek?"

"Our captain Marshall telling us about the pond."

"One of the cute baby snakes we discovered."

"Baby snake pt.2"

"On our way down into Decker Canyon."

"Lake Berryessa from above"

"The beginning of our adventure"

"Observed Yellow Growth on multiple plants."

"The Canadian Goose"

"Camo Frog"

"Mouse in Hiding"

"Sluggie"

"Capture and Release Tick"

For the next class, everyone should come prepared by:

1. Reading chapters 5 and 6 of How to Do Ecology
2. Reading my novice blog post-P.S. I hope that the pictures got their appreciation :)
3. Finishing R homework 2
4. Update your weekly reflections.
5. Identify the organisms they observed and took pictures of
6. Brainstorm at least five ideas and write them down in their notebooks. 
7. To simplify the literary search, write down how innovative, feasible, and meaningful the ideas are to our goal of a unique but broadly relevant research project.
8. Bring your notebooks to write down your thoughts and ideas!
9. Be prepared to share your ideas
10. If you have any questions, please post them on Slack!

This is our itinerary for April 11th, 2025:

• 10 am: Meet at our classroom in Briggs
• 10:10 am: Divide into small groups and share prepared ideas and organisms identified from Quail Ridge. Choose one or two ideas to share with the class as potential research topics (use whiteboards).
• 11:10 am: Take a 10-minute break
• 11:20 am: Share with the class the ideas the group has voted to be a potential research topic, as well as the organisms identified
• 11:45 am: Share thoughts and feelings about the ideas. Any feedback or creative criticism is welcome. Hopefully, this will help refine our ideas and narrow our search. 
• 12 pm: Unfortunately, that is the end of our class time, and we must say goodbye until next time.

I hope you enjoyed the blog. I will see you on Friday! Your blogger Sai :)