Second Nature Walk: Fungi
For this nature walk, I walked through Pine Tree Preserve on campus to the reservoir where I then explored some woodsy areas off of the paths. The weather was cooler this morning than it was on the last nature walk I went on, and it was overcast. Similarly to on my first nature walk, however, I was surprised by how much fungi I was able to observe–especially now that I was looking for it. As I continued my walk, I learned to look in a few common places in which I tended to find fungi: on and around the bottom of tree trunks, on tree stumps, and on and around rocks. I noticed that a lot of the fungi that I observed had visual similarities. For instance, all of my observations were light brown or tan in appearance and the majority appeared to be a spongy texture. Additionally, many of the mushrooms I saw shared the appearance of a rounded cap. These similarities are evidence of a shared common ancestor which is supported by the fact that fungi form a clade on the tree of life, something that we have discussed in lecture. However, despite these similarities, all of my observations were slightly different from each other–some more than others. For instance, the observations under genus trametes and bracket fungi looked a lot different from my other observations. The differences amongst my observations is evidence of divergent evolution, because, despite knowing that these fungi share a common ancestor, they are visually distinct from one another.
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