With construction all around Princeton’s campus this fall, there’s a lot of exposed soil as seemingly every week crews move to a new area, leaving another scar of fresh soil. Although plant life is of course disrupted by this, there’s still a lot of ecology to appreciate in these soils! There can be an amazing diversity of microorganisms in even very small soil samples, including fungi, bacteria, protozoa, and nematodes. 
    After building our foldscopes (which was a fun venture away from computer work that I had been doing all day), we headed outside to collect samples. Stepping out of the building basically means stepping into a muddy construction zone. Because construction is such a present part of life on campus these days, I decided to give its byproduct, mud, a little attention. 

    I’m not so skilled with the identification of microorganisms in New Jersey soil (so if anyone can identify something I’d be curious :D). I do know that some of these organisms that might be in this sample participate in mutualisms with plants. After being disturbed by construction, however, these mutualisms would no longer exist because the plants no longer exist. Perhaps the community of microorganisms in this sample without plants is different from a similar community with plants present. Also, perhaps this soil has organisms that are usually present deep in the soil, because I retrieved the sample from a recently filled in hole in the ground!  I conducted this project as part of Professor Pringle’s EEB321 class at Princeton University.