Poop! There it is.
"Poop! There it is." - sang with emphasis mirroring that of the 1993 Tag Team hit Whoomp (There It Is).
It is week one of my second year as a counselor at the YHikes! Young Explorer Summer Camp, and I still forget that these fresh six (and even twelve) year olds understand maybe half of my references. I found this musical connection hilarious, and extremely relevant, but I digress.
Our first morning hike yielded many insect discoveries, topped off with a single living eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina). At a bare minimum, we could definitively say that there was at least one species of reptile and one species of insect. While our hike was not void of living organisms, we knew there had to be more. If we didn't see the animals, though, how could we say they were there?
This seemingly simple question plagued my mind... then it struck me. We look for evidence.
So, what is evidence? The fingerprint left at a crime scene? Candy wrapper in a play room? Red Bull cans/coffee cups at your roommate's desk? Whether we recognize it or not, we are constantly compiling information to assess our surroundings - gathering evidence. Although I would argue that evidence is always important to collect (if you have ever accompanied me on a hike, you have quickly realized my stance on this point as indicated by my pace), it becomes increasingly critical when you combine 8-10 chatty children in an otherwise still environment, AND expect them to observe all of the living diversity (i.e., the prey organisms avoiding loud, four-foot tall predators).
Alright, great. Evidence is the key to unlocking knowledge of local diversity. Now that we know we need to start observing the non-living aspects of our surrounding ecosystem, what should we look for? In nature, there are many types of evidence such as scat (i.e., poop; my favorite), tracks (e.g., paw prints), feathers, and even homes (e.g., nests). Each type can tells us about the sorts of organisms present in an environment (sometimes general groups, other times down to species) and even the types of food available in the environment (i.e., the content of said scat/poop).
Unpopular opinion - scat is my absolute favorite type of evidence. Why? I find that scat presents a fun challenge of narrowing down the provider by the color, shape, size and content of the dropping. How cool is it that we can identify organisms by their poop? SO COOL. Not to mention the content and condition of the scat can tell us about an organisms feeding behavior and overall health.
Although less obvious, organisms also release microscopic evidence from their bodies known as DNA. This evidence is released from an organism's body in the form of either spit, mucus, scales, or even scat, and then clumps to particles in the environment like soil or water. The soil or water can then be collected and tested in a lab to identify which organisms the DNA once belonged to. This type of evidence is known as environmental DNA (eDNA) and a tool utilized by scientists (including myself, see post about eDNA here) to monitor the presence of evasive species... this is my second favorite type of evidence.
Anyways, back to camp - While I do not think we will begin collecting environmental samples to teach our campers how to extract and amplify DNA through a polymerase chain reaction (PCR; this is how I identify organisms for my work... i.e., a lot of pipetting - I think the camper's tiny hands may fall off); I do, however, hope we can continue fine tuning our observation skills to become the best scat-, ichn-, plum-, and cali- ologists (studies of scat, paw prints, feathers, and bird nests, respectively) Virginia has ever seen. See pictures below featuring the evidence found at the Clifton Institute during previous Saturday YHikes, maybe we will see more like these this week!
ADDITIONALLY: if you would like to learn more about evidence in Virginia ecosystems, check out my Tracks and Traces exercise made for this year's Young Explorers Summer Day Camps at the Clifton Institute
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