Outdoor Reflections Module 5

RaeShelle Erickson

For this assignment I chose to observe the natural world in Dugway, Utah on a four wheeling trip with my parents, boyfriend and our friend. Aldo Leopold’s land ethic explains the world using a pyramid. The top of the pyramid is like the top of the food chain with the most dominant predator. The base of the pyramid is everything that gives everything else energy. These are usually the plants and bacteria that create their own energy or the providers for everything else. The land ethic says that the land is not just dirt, rocks and water. The land in this theory embodies everything from dirt to plants to animals. Leopold wants humans to consider the impact they have on various environments and work to better their habits to protect everything that is living. He understood that we only have our planet and we need to protect it for each and every generation after ours. The only way to do that is to take care of it and work together to keep it peaceful.

            The first creature I noticed in Dugway was a little lizard. This lizard was missing most of its tail and was laying under a small weed. The plant it was laying under was most likely providing it with shade and camouflage from predators such as birds, people and possibly other lizards. The plant would help increase energy flow by helping the lizard cool down and providing a safe area for the lizard to rest for a while which helps conserve its personal energy and allows its tail some time to grow back. Things that would obstruct the lizard’s energy flow could be the loss of its tail either from fighting or a predator trying to eat it. Not having a long tail makes it harder for the lizard to maintain its balance which would also make climbing difficult. The needs and interests of the lizard include shade, food and water, and camouflage. While I was sitting there watching this lizard it found shade and camouflage. While four wheeling, we discovered areas with water runoff from nearby farmland that was fenced off.

            The second creature I found was a female black widow walking around. This black widow seemed to be fine physically and was wandering around in circles. The main threat to this black widow seemed to be the humans all around. To increase energy flow, the black widow would need food, shade and camouflage. Food seemed to be fairly easy as there were flies and grasshoppers all around. Shade would have been as simple to the black widow as it was for the lizard because there were small plants all around. This black widow seemed to hide by burying itself in a little bit of dirt or crawling under things like our truck tires or the trailer. It continued to come out frequently though until my friend noticed it and killed it.

            Interactions between the lizard and black widow didn’t occur in the time I was there. I imagine the black widow would bite the lizard and kill it. Being a small lizard I don’t think it would have eaten the spider. These two species probably don’t interact often if any interactions happen at all. I feel like both creatures probably feed on the same bugs but hide in different areas. The spider probably had a web somewhere nearby to catch food whereas the lizard probably hides behind plants or climbs the small trees that were around when its tail is healthy and intact.

            This assignment made me think of how a black widow and a small lizard might interact which is something I never would have considered before I saw them near each other. Human interactions can affect this relationship in a variety of ways. If humans left both creatures, they would either fight for food or fight to kill on another. If the lizard got killed by a human, the spider would have a little more food from what the lizard is no longer eating or one less target if it were brave enough to go after the lizard. Since my friend killed the black widow, the lizard probably also has more food and one less threat. This may have expanded the lizard’s territory a little bit and provided more safety for it.

            Aldo Leopold asks people to protect these creatures and their habitat as best they can and avoid killing them unless they’re a threat to you. We killed the black widow because she kept walking towards us even when my mom and I walked away from her. This is why she kept walking in circles. Our obligations according to Leopold’s land ethic mean that we probably shouldn’t have killed the black widow and just walked away from her completely but we ignored this since she was between both of our vehicles and kept following us a bit. Had we ignored her, she could have climbed into our trailer or onto any of us if we hadn’t noticed her and possibly hurt one of us. Or she could have avoided us completely and nothing would have happened. It’s all a matter of perspective.

The land is a pyramid. Each layer depends on the layer below it. How much change can we put it through and how fast before it's too much? #Leopold #BioticPyramid #EngeryFountain

#BioticPyramid defines what the entire tweet is about. Aldo Leopold called the relationship between the land and all it's inhabitants a biotic pyramid. It's a way to symbolize the relationship between the environment like the plants and rivers, the producers and the predators at the top of the food chain. I personally feel like Leopold called it a Biotic pyramid because of the symbiotic relationships between each part of the pyramid itself.

#EnergyFountain explains how each layer requires one another. The top of the pyramid needs to eat the layer below it to get it's energy. The same can be said all the way down to the producer level. It then changes because these are the plants that can create energy through photosynthesis. In my opinion, fountain isn't the most accurate term that could be used because the energy flow actually goes up to the point of the pyramid. The largest amount exists at the bottom and gets smaller and smaller until the very top of the pyramid.