kruzzoli's blog

Climate change is a global phenomenon that is changing the average environments in which we live. Change effects different regions of the world in different ways and to different extents. In general, Maine is seeing an increase in temperature during all four seasons of the year. Figure F shows the increase in average temperature from 1970 up to 2017. Winter, indicated by the blue line, has seen an increase of above 4°F, this is the biggest warming season. Fall has increased by just under 4 °F and the spring and summer have increased the least, however summer, the season with the smallest increase, has still seen a rise of just under 1°F (Seasonal Warming Trends. 2018). There is a significant trend indicating a change in temperature in the state of Maine. The current average temperature of winter in Caribou is 23.5°F, so an increase of 10°F would result in an average winter above freezing. If this pattern continues with an increase of about .085°F per year, in just over 118 years this increase would be enough to raise the average winter to above freezing. This is significant when considering the annual temperature anomalies in Figure T because this shows the temperatures will only continue to warm. There are significantly more years warmer than average.

If the trend of an increasingly warm winter continues, which is proven by both Figure G and Figure T, then eventually Caribou will not see temperatures below freezing on average. This will have drastic effects on the seasons and the precipitation, more flooding will occur as there is less snow and the length of seasons will change. Warmer temperatures will cause many problems such as drastic changing of ecosystems, so the wildlife currently inhabiting northern Maine will not be suitable for the environment. They will begin to migrate north to follow the cooler weather and wildlife from the south will migrate north to Caribou in order to also follow cooler temperatures. The ecosystems throughout the country will be out of balance and this can have drastic impacts on industry and the ecosystems.

Caribou has a humid continental climate, DFB, according to the Köppen classification. This means the city experiences large temperature differences throughout the seasons and has very cold winters as well as very hot summers. Precipitation is ample throughout the year as well. The climograph demonstrated in figure 1 shows the range in temperature with a peak in July and a minimum in January. July is the hottest month of the year with an average temperature of 65.6°F and January is the coldest with an average temperature of 8°F. The average temperature range is 57.6°F which a large range compared to southern areas of the country. Precipitation is ample throughout the year, with July being the wettest month on average. February is the driest but still sees a little over 2 inches of precipitation. The city sees and average of 108.7 inches of snow, which is about 50 inches greater than the average snowfall in coastal Maine and 30 inches greater than the southern interior of Maine.

New England is home to a very specific type of storm called a nor’easter. This is a storm that develops along the east coast of the United States and reach their maximum intensity around New England and the southern parts of Canada, just north of New England. The polar jet stream transports cold arctic air south across the plains of Canada and through the U.S. then this cold air travels eat toward the Atlantic ocean. The Atlantic waters are typically mild and warm during the winter months because of the jet stream. The difference in temperature between the cold air over land and the warm air over water fuels the energy needed to produce a nor’easter (weather.gov). They usually develop in the latitudes between Georgia and New Jersey within 100 miles east or west of the Atlantic coast.  Nor’easters can occur at any point throughout the year but are most frequent and most violent from September through April (weather.gov).

Nor’easters travel north along the east coast and tend bring a lot of precipitation, usually in the form of snow due to the season in which they are most common.

In the future I would still like to improve my time management skills because I still struggle with leaving assignments and studying until last minute. I was better with this class specifically this semester, however I did find myself slacking in other courses. Not procrastinating would be a very beneficial skill to improve upon because I would find myself stressing a lot less before big assignments or in weeks that have multiple exams and due dates. I could also still better my studying techniques because test taking is still something I struggle with but I did learn a lot about what studying techniques work well for me this semester.

This course involved a lot of group work and outside class involvement. Most of my classes before did not involve forming groups and all the work was individual and I have had very few research projects. I have improved as a student because I had to significantly improve my study habits in order to do well in this class. I had to work on bettering my study habits and focus on doing a lot of outside class work. I saw improvement in myself as a student throughout this semester in the fact that I improved greatly on the second exam and  I started to understand the material a lot more. Towards the end I was allowing myself time to actually go through class notes and do the readings which is not how I started the semester. I greatly improved my time management skills and I was better able to figure out what work I needed to do during a certain week and I was able to make a plan to effectively get all the work done in. Having to rely on myself to learn a lot of the material improved my skills as a student because I started to be better at finishing assignments ahead of time and I did the readings throughout the weeks instead of ignoring them. I also improved as a team member because I had to not only do well to account for myself, but to account for my partners as well. This meant I did not have the option of slacking. I also used a lot more software this semester that I have never used before such as Raven and JWatcher. Learning how to use these softwares gave me a wider range of professional skills and will also help me in learning how use new software in the future because I know I will have to read manuals and practice in order to properly utilize a new software given to me.

This was the first specified biology class that I have taken that was more in depth than just “evolution” or “ecology”. I had a lot of prior knowledge about evolution and some animal behavior in terms of environment from other biology classes, but I learned a lot more in depth examples of how to apply evolutionary concepts to the roles of animals. I never looked deeply into animal communication before this class but now I notice a lot more animal interactions and I find myself trying to reason certain behaviors that I observe. When I went home throughout this semester I noticed how my cat interacts with us more and that there are certain things he does that will always be indicators of something he wants. When he wants to be fed he will nudge me and meow, so I know he’s hungry. When he wants to be let outside, instead of nudging me he’ll walk around my feet until I follow him to the door. I’ve noticed that there are different signals for different reasons, which is something I did not think about prior to this course. We also recently got a new cat and I’ve noticed that my cat has started to act differently when in the presence of the new cat. Now,  I try to observe behaviors and think of reasons that could explain a certain meow or tail movement and then observe to see if I can reason it. This is a new behavior of mine that I developed from this class because I did not think about my cat having different signals and different ways to communicate before this class. From this class I have become more curious about how animals interact with one another and I observe my pets a lot more than I would have without taking this course.

As a first semester junior, Biology 551 was my first upper level course in my college career, prior to this course I only took mainly introductory level courses so this was one of the first challenges I had with taking this course. This class posed mainly challenges for me because it was also one of the first classes I took at UMass that was heavily based on teamwork and outside research projects. My previous two years were filled with lecture and exam style classes where I was not reliable for contributing to a group and most projects were small and individual. Animal communication improved my abilities to work with a group effectively and forced me to take a stronger hold on my education because I learned that I had to do a lot more outside class work in order to succeed in this class. This class improved my academic abilities, professional abilities, and sparked a stronger interest in the science of animal communication and the function of signals and interactions between animals within a species. It has also improved my abilities to think about how to carry out a research project in terms of thinking of a question and coming up with hypotheses and potential answers, and then a research method to effectively find an answer to the question.

• Elevator speech: Our experiment researched whether or not a relationship existed between the weight of cellar spiders and the thickness of the web they produced. We weighed three spiders and were able to collect web from their containers. We took images of the webs using a nikon inverted microscope and then took the measurements of the thickness using a software called “Fiji”. Our data displayed a negative trend, however, other similar studies done show no relationship between the weight and thickness of spiders of different species. To improve our research and to find better data it would be beneficial to take measurements from more spiders of a wider range of weight and find a way to be more consistent in measuring the silk thickness.

• Another study that was conducted that explored a relationship between spider weight and spider silk thickness produced nonlinear results. There was not a strong relationship present between the weight of the spider and the thickness of the silk. This study looked at four different species of spiders and in each case, no relationship existed. In Araneus diadematus, 5 spiders were tested and the thickness of silk was random and could not be predicted based on the weight. In Nephila edulis, both spiders had the same silk thickness of 2.7 μm even though one spider was 206 mg heavier. In Latrodectus mactans, the thickness of the silk varied among the three spiders used but had no pattern present. The last species, euprosthenops sp, both had a silk thickness of 2.0 μm, however one spider was 505 mg heavier than the other spider. From this data, there is no relationship between the weight and thickness of the silk. The thickness of the silk might be consistent among all spider in certain species as seen in Nephila edulis and Euprosthenops sp, but a relationship between spider silk thickness and spider body weight does not exist.