Today I noticed that everything seemed a lot more dried up or less satiated than last visit. Some of the fungi that I have been checking up on each week were hard to the touch, whereas last week they were soft and you were able to press down into the fungi. I also noticed that there was a lot of aquatic wildlife active, including fish, turtles, and even a water snake, however a lot of the land animals, with the exception to birds, were nowhere to be seen. I also saw less bugs out flying around and sitting on leaves. The majority of the bugs I saw tended to be under logs and leaves where it was dark and damp, or inside dead trees. I did also check back up on the funnel weaver spider web, and noticed that there were no longer termites coming in and out of that specific hole. Maybe the spider ate them all, or they decided to move homes? It was definately interesting to see how the environment around me changed when it was introduced to hot, dry weather, especially right after a wave of rain storms.
One of the big things that I have been exploring is trying to identify a certain type of fungi. Throughout my blog, I have narrowed it down to be either a red Reishi fungi or a red belted conk fungi. In order to do this, I performed a spore print and scratch test. To do this, I started by sampling different fungi to take home and test. To perform the spore print, I made sure that the gills of the fungi were exposed and put the fungi on a white sheet of paper (gill side down), inside an airtight container and let it sit overnight. The next morning, I removed the fungi from the container to look for spore prints. The fungi is supposed to leave a white or yellow spore print if it is a red belted conk and a brown spore print if the fungi is a red reishi. When I looked in the morning, I noticed that there was brown spore prints on the sheet of paper, leading me to lean towards the fungi being a red belted conch, however some sheets also had either faint white spots or no spots visible. While I did the spore print, I also performed a scratch test. For this, I took a knife, cut into the fungi, and left scratch marks with a blade on the fungi. If bruising was present, then that meant that the fungi was a red reishi, and if no bruising developed, then that meant it was a red belted conk. When I removed the fungi samples to look at the spore prints, I also looked to see if any bruising was present around the areas where scratches were made. I found that some samples had bruising, but others didn’t, and that the ones that had bruising, were also ones with brown spore prints. This leads me to conclude that both types of fungi were present on the same tree that I have been exploring throughout the wonder blog, which helps me understand my confusion on why I was not originally able to identify that there was one or another species of fungi. This also means that multiple types of wood decay fungi can be present on the same tree, something that I did not previously know.
(Above) is a photo of all of the fungi that I sampled after they had been put into an airtight container
(Above) is an image of a red reishi fungi being inspected after a night in an airtight container. You can see the bruising present on the fungi from the scratch test, as the flesh is brown instead of white.
(Above) is another image of a fungi after being removed from its container. This fungus has no bruising present from the scratch marks, which means that this is most definitely a red belted conk fungus in this image.
(Above) is an image of the brown spore print left by this red reishi fungus. Many of the spore prints did not come out well because a lot of the samples I took had been dried out from the heat wave Winding Trails has been experiencing the past week.
(Above) is a photo of a red belted conk fungi that I decided to cut in half for fun. In this image, you can see the brown wavy like gills on the underbelly of the fungus, along with streaks across the stem leading to the middle of the fungus, which is where water and nutrients from the stem flow into the gills.
(Above) is an image of a red reishi fungi that I took a sample from
(Above) is an image of a red belted conk that I took a sample from
APA Citation
Sayner, A. (2024, April 30). A complete guide to reishi mushrooms. GroCycle. https://grocycle.com/reishi-mushrooms/#:~:text=A%20reishi%20mushroom%20will%20bruise,a%20dark%20brown%20spore%20print.
In this wonder blog I noticed that a lot of the plants seemed to have more color than last time, and also, I noticed that the water level had risen and that there appeared to be new areas with erosion. I also noticed that there were a lot of burrows under logs and in trees. I don’t know if these were there before and had just been missed, or if they were created/updated to survive the rainstorms, thus making them stand out more. One really interesting thing that I found was a burrow in a tree that looked like it had termites coming in and out of. What made this find interesting however was the fact that there seemed to be some sort of silk web funnel leading into the burrow. I do not know what the purpose of this is, and if it was made by the species habituating inside the tree, or a potential predator hunting these termites, or is it possible that these termites live in tandem with whatever else potentially made this web? This is something that I am definitely going to check back up on when I go back for my next blog.
This photo depicts the web of a funnel weaver spider. If you look closely, you can see that the hole that the funnel like web leads to is layered in sand and that there appears to be a black spec inside the tunnel (this is a termite that had just crawled up from inside the tunnel/tree. This is something that stuck out to me when I came back to this spot to check on the fungi I had discovered during my first blog.
Photo 2
This photo depicts a few tiny red fungi that I found in a section on the path that leads towards the island I am studying. The size of this fungi is about the size of a Q-Tip, however its bright color caught my eye immediately.
Photo 3
This photo depicts a green Sheild bug on the leaf of the blueberry plant that I investigated and sketched last blog. I looked to see if I could find more but that was the only one, I found, and I had not found any last blog so it may just be coincidence that it was there, but it was still cool nonetheless to see the blueberry plant being used not only for food but also in a sense for habitat.
Photo 4
This photo shows a bunch of moss and other greens growing on this decayed log. It caught my eye because I was not expecting to see something like moss growing on a decaying object, but after thinking more about it the decaying wood probably makes for a good fertilizer with nutrients.
Photo 5
This last photo shows a group of flowers that I found in a leafy area of the island. What boggles me is that all of these flowers grew and blossomed facing downwards. I have never seen this before and am so used to seeing flowers blossoming towards the direction of sunlight that I did not know what to think. it turns out that this a spotted wintergreen plant and that it is normal for the flowers to blossom downwards, however I could not find out why this is in my research.
One of the items that I would like to research is the funnel shaped web (of which I found out belongs to a funnel weaver spider) and why there are termites going in and out of the spider’s tunnel. While I was not able to find any definitive answers, I did find out that funnel weaver spiders do like to live inside decaying wood. This is interesting because this tunnel is on the same tree that I found Red Reishi and/or Red Belted Conk fungi (two types of wood decay fungi). Termites also are attracted to decaying wood as a food source and habitat. Another factor is that the funnel weaver spiders’ main diet is insects. Thus, my hypothesis based on the information I have researched is that the funnel weaver spider has decided to make this termite den into its own home, and that the spider is also preying on the termites as part of its diet. Why the termites keep coming back is another question, and this is likely due to the fact that they are drawn to follow the pheromone left by other termites which leads it back to the spider tunnel, however I am also somewhat unsure if this is the right hypothesis for this second question.
While taking photos I noticed a difference in the way my mind processed what I was looking at compared to when I was sketching things. I noticed that it was harder for more minute details to stand out and actually be noticed by me when I was taking pictures versus sketching them. With that being said, I was also able to see more detail in the photos I took than I was able to with my naked eye, and I was able to look at things from different perspectives, such as looking at a tree from the level of the forest floor. It was similar to sketching in the sense that with photos, I was still trying to capture and tell a story of what I saw so that I and others can experience what was seen from my perspective during each blog. This process, both of sketching and photography has helped me look at my site in a different way, because I can now look at it from different perspectives and also compare what it looked like from visit to visit.
I noticed that there was less animal activity compared to the previous blog, probably because there was a bear roaming the area. Plants seemed more rejuvenated since the rainstorms. There was also a lot more erosion and bugs under objects such as logs, likely due to the previous rainstorms. There were a bunch of new things that I found while exploring, especially when I focused on minute details (ex: last blog I noticed a new plant, and this blog I noticed a red fuzzy growth on that plant that I had either missed or overlooked).
The fungi found on these trees are actually a couple different species of fungi, even though they all look very similar. The most prominent being what I think are “Red-Belted Conk” fungi, and “Red Reishi” fungi, . Both the Red-Belted Conk and Red Reishi fungi are wood decay fungi, which means that they grow on decaying wood. These fungi, and other wood decay fungi produce extracellular enzymes and actively transfer carbon, nutrients, water, and oxygen, along highly branching hyphal networks. These fungi grow through the vascular tissue of the wood, breaking down and degrading the wood, also causing the wood to weigh less and have less strength. The pungent smell comes from the decomposition of the wood.
