ABI 150 Section A - Adventures for Everyone!

 Groups were decided for the last four proposals to go to each site and try to understand how feasible each proposal would be to accomplish so that they can come up with a presentation to convince their classmates to choose their proposal!

Proposal 1’s group consisted of Sam Sandigo, Samatha Bermio, and Isabella Caro who went to the Yolo Bypass. Their main goal was to survey the field sites, figure out which bird species they wanted to study. They surveyed different lots for abundance and diversity of the birds, as well as assessed certain conditions such as the water depth, and vegetation. Not long after though they realized they may need to rework their proposal to make it more focused towards a certain goal. They made quite a few observations as well including an ideal area to set up trail cams to watch and get some otter observations but they also took notice of how little birds were there, but no problem for this group they combatted this problem by traveling to more lots for variation.

(Group 1 Observing bird species within yolo bypass)

Proposal #5’s group consisted Riley Rodriguez, Huijae Kim, and Harvey Sun who also went to Yolo Bypass. Their proposal was on wading birds and their goal was to monitor and document their foraging strategies compared to other species of birds. They went to multiple lots within Yolo bypass to document each species and their abundance as well as their behavior in the presence of other species. They ended up narrowing down their observations to focus on stilts and yellowlegs, and started discussing their budget. One of their main problems was that there was significant wind which disturbed the sites where the species were abundant before so they problem solved and focused more on the sites that were undisturbed

(Photo of Yolo Bypass Wetlands with lack of birds due to wind, 

and a photo of a snake eating a mouse)

Proposal #7’s group consisted of Carissa Kerns, Taylor Simas, Liliana Gdlian, and Lianna who went to the oak savannah patch within Cahill whose proposal was on Swallowtails. Their main goal was to find 30-40 pipevine swallowtail eggs and find where they were distributed on the pipevine plant. They split up into groups to cover more ground of searching different patches of pipevines where they flipped over leaves to search for the eggs. The group in total searched through 4 patches of Pipevine and began considering slightly altering their proposal due to lack of eggs found. Although the group did observe a high density of caterpillars on the plant itself they also noticed there were not many eggs or butterflies on or around the host plant at all. 

(Image of Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly with distressed wings)

Proposal #8’s group consisted of Josie Many, Olivia Lawless, Tanya Dahnda, Hannah Barrientos who also went to the oak savannah patch within Cahill because their proposal was also on swallowtails. Their goal was to find pipevine swallowtail eggs within the pipevine plant and track the density of the grouping of the eggs to see if the butterflies preferred laying in one place more than another. The group actually got separated on the way to the oak savannah patch because there was a phone that was lost somewhere earlier on the trail! So Josie, Tanya, and Marshall went on the hunt for the lost phone while Olivia and Hannah worked on the proposal by observing the pipevine patches. Unfortunately they also ran into the trouble of not finding many pipevine swallowtail eggs. Though they also noticed an abundance of caterpillars within the host plant which led to the group pivoting their proposal idea slightly.

(Group #8 enjoying lunch after finding the phone and observing pipevine swallowtails)