What is success without any setbacks???

Today was another troubleshooting day as our experiment isn't going as planned, but there is still time to make a few changes to our experiment. Let's make the best out of the 2.5 weeks left of class together. WE GOT THIS GUYS!!! Also thanks to those who collected butterflies during the weekend. 

Before class

Sam, Tina, and I defrosted the butterflies in their envelopes so that we didn't lose track of them as they were numbered and labeled by sex. 

10:00 am

Class began with Tina giving a brief description of the goals for today and with both Marshall and Adrian bringing in more snacks for the class. Big thank you to them for keeping us fueled. 

10:05 -11:35 am

The microbe group leaves to the lab to work on plating the samples taken from the butterflies caught and started making fungi and bacteria plates for new samples on Friday. 

10:20 - 10:40 am

The flower group started testing butterfly preference color with blue and yellow flowers in the big enclosure which lead to the 1st setback of the day 😐. We were able to test 5 different butterflies but turns out they weren't choosing either color as they were flying and landing everywhere but on the flowers. This led us to try out different methods and see what could work so that the butterflies can at least approach the flowers made. 

10:40 - 11:10 am

The flower group continued testing the butterflies but this time in the small flight cage with the flowers on top of a clear box so that the flowers would be at a higher elevation in the cage. During this time we were able to test 4 butterflies in which only 1 landed on a blue flower and the rest just kind of did nothing but stick to the sides of the cage or fly around. This was setback #2 of the day 😢💔. 

11:10 - 11:20 am

After testing the butterflies in both the small and big cage the flower group decided on coming back into the classroom as it was very hot outside and discussing other possibilities to move forward with our experiment. During this time we also took a small snack break 😊.  

11:20 - 11:35 am

The flower group fed the remaining butterflies that were still alive out of the 27 caught at Cahill during the weekend. Since there was a very low survival rate in the butterflies caught we noticed that the only things we changed in their care was the rinse and being kept in the envelopes while defrosting which could have been possible problems on why not many of them survived. As we fed sadly a couple more butterflies died on us but at least they were able to get their last meal in. R.I.P 💔 This was sadly the 3rd setback of the day. 

11:35 : 12:00 pm

During this time we came together as a whole class and had a discussion about possible changes to our experiment. We came up with different ideas, for example the possibility of maybe catching other species of butterflies (cabbage whites) and comparing what is found on its proboscis between species and site locations or revisiting the question about spermatophores. We also agreed on collected data based on the butterflies wing condition which would be determined on a scale of 0-4 with 0 being no damage on wings and 4 being damage on all 4 wings. Then we split back into our groups and within the flower group some were assigned to measure the wing conditions of the butterflies.

12:00 - 1:50 pm

The wing conditions group measured the damage on the wings of each butterfly, dead or alive and put the data into a spreadsheet. 

The flower group tried a different method for the placement of the flowers and glued them to the sides of the flight cage with sugar water solution in each flower but sadly it didn't give us any accurate results to their preference as the they didn't land on the flowers themselves but leaned towards the side with the blue flowers. Set back #4💔. We then changed our methods again and tried testing on real flowers that we collected from outside the building. We brought in 3 different types of flowers and while running trials we observed that they preferred the white looking flower as maybe it looked the closest to their preferred feeding flower (Yerba Santa). 

The microbe group continued making fungi and bacteria plates for us to use on Friday and made a total of 200 plates, 100 of each 👏 👏. 

Plans for Friday

Butterfly catching group meet @9:00 am at usual parking lot where vans are parked and go to wetlands to collect cabbage whites. (Adrian, Courtney, Chloe, Manu, Joseph)

Everyone else meets in class as the microbe group will be checking on the rinses and growth of the plates. And the rest of us will be going to the arboretum to collect California Buckeye and potentially catch pipevines.

GREAT JOB TODAY GUYS REMEMBER WE GOT THIS!!!