User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
At first I had difficulty keeping my field notes, data tables, and field photos organized. Once I decided that I was going to break the study regions up into the sections of trail not adjacent Beaver Lake (‘exterior’ group) and the section of trail with the south side exposed to Beaver Lake (‘Beaver Lake’ group) I remade my field data tables, and collected the data in a much more organized way. After each sampling day, I returned from the field and entered the presence-absence data into an Excel table, so the observations were fresh in my mind. When taking photos, I took a photo of the field sheet (showing the replicate number) so I could organize and refer to my photos accurately for desktop confirmations. I performed desktop lichen group confirmations in 25% of samples collected, as a quality control step in lichen identifications. I had planned before data collection how I was going to aggregate the data into groups.
I arbitrarily chose 25% as the threshold to indicate ‘dominant’ lichen groups. I was surprised to find the distribution of lichen groups were somewhat similar between Cupressaceae and Pinaceae tree families. Interestingly, Pinaceae appeared to have a darker green version (variant or species) within the Cladonia genus, whereas the Cupressaceae were associated with a pale-green (less crinkled edges) species within the Cladonia genus. Also, Pinaceae in the exterior group had the least proportion of visible podetia (development stage of the Cladonia sp.). I am going to review the available information in the primary literature, related to the factors that play a role in the development of lichen podetia.
