Resource partitioning

The tree is near a park on the corner of Seminary and School. Its hard to tell exactly what happened, but there was a lot of evidence of high interaction with this tree. Near the bottom of the tree there was about a 3 foot tall area of no bark, it was kind of smooth. It was indented, so something purposely got rid of the bark, but I don't know what. I would guess some kind of squirrel, rat, or raccoon did it since it definitely does not look like the result of birds.
There were also a lot of knots in the outside of the wood, like those callous things you were talking in class about. These could be caused by birds digging into the wood to get at stuff inside the tree, or it could be insects crawling around inside.
At that time, there was no animals visible on the tree, but the whole area has a lot of birds and squirrels, so there are probably some of those living there. There were also little pieces of some kind of fruit that fell off a nearby tree, and showed evidence of animals eating them.

Resource Partitioning- Scott B, Alex Bishay & Gwen Eder

Our tree was located on Belden, in front of the parking lot. One of the first things that we noticed was that there was some human interaction with the tree. There were staples left in the tree from when a sign or poster had been there, and because of this the bark was starting to peel off. We also noticed that there were some holes in the tree, possibly from a termite or another animal that was using the tree for a parasitic relationship. Although we did not see any squirrels or other rodents, we did see evidence of their existence on the tree. We saw scrapings on the tree that looked they came from the claw of an animal. There was bark peeling off in a few places, which also could have come from the claw of an animal. While most of the relationships we saw with the tree showed evidence of the tree being harmed in the relationship, hopefully there were some interactions that are mutually beneficial for the tree and the other organism. We also noticed a layer of lichen, or moss, was growing on the tree. While we aren’t sure what exactly the lichen does for the tree and vice versa, one thing that we do know is that lichen always grows on the north side of the tree, which is beneficial to humans trying to find their way.

Trees

Allie Meyerson
Anna Diede
Mike Hansberry
For this resource partitioning example, I used a tree at my parents’ house in rural Minnesota. I found many different species, or evidence of different species on and around our tree. The tree that I focused on was a plum tree, and therefore, felt that I would be able to find more species because they would be attracted to the fruit. I saw molds, and algae’s, evidence of bark being stripped at the base, which I assumed was from deer and other small animals, many different insects, and all sorts of different vegetation at the base of the tree that will indubitably effect the soil that the tree grows from. I also could tell that there were insects or harmful bacteria on the tree because of the decay of the leaves.