Backyard Exploring!
Nov 03, 2020 • 8:56 AM UTC
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will10cate
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I conducted this project as part of Professor Pringle’s EEB321 class at Princeton University. With courses being conducted virtually, the majority of my time is spent indoors looking at a screen for many hours a day. For this project, I wanted to venture outside and see if I could find big things that I could analyze on a micro-scale. With the season currently changing, many leaves have started to pile up in my yard. This peaked my interest as I was curious as to whether a fallen leaf would have any noticeable differences compared to one that was still healthy and intact on a tree – specifically if I could see any signs of decomposers. For this, I decided to focus my study on a deciduous leaf compared to a coniferous one. To conduct the two scenarios, I used a leaf found on the ground from a beech tree and compared it to a leaf that I picked from a holly bush.
Figure 2: Coniferous Leaf Initially, I started with the coniferous leaf. Although I was having some trouble at the beginning affixing my phone to the microscope, I was eventually able to get this picture. You can observe outlines of plant cells – with the dark structures within the cells being certain components (such as the nucleus or chloroplasts). This picture, along with the actual shape and color of the leaf (shiny and dark green), indicates that the plant is very healthy with little to no signs of decomposers. This makes sense as the leaf was from the bush itself.
Figure 3: Deciduous Leaf I next looked at the deciduous leaf that I collected from the ground. The leaf was a dark brown color, studded with holes. Looking through the microscope I was able to see small specs of dirt and certain outlines of plant cells. After analyzing the sample further, I found parts of the leaf with small dark circles. Although I was not able to get a very detailed image of these circles, they did not seem to have the same structure as most plant cells – indicating that it could potentially be dirt, bacteria, or other small organisms. Looking at the state of the leaf, I assumed that it was in the process of being decomposed, and the circles were in fact organisms – either using the leaf as a habitat or consuming it as a resource.
Figure 4: Deciduous Leaf Overall, clear differences could be seen when analyzing the two leaf samples. The coniferous leaf was mostly made up of plant cells, with little to no other foreign particles. On the other hand, the deciduous leaf had a lot of dirt and brown circles all over the sample – potentially indicating signs of bacteria and decomposers. If I were to do this project again, I would analyze samples of leaves at various decomposing stages to see if notable differences could be observed.
-Willemijn
-Willemijn
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