For the field observation, I visited three locations at the University of Manitoba each location with a different topology, vegetation, and fungi species. I had initially started my field observation by looking at the rate at which Manitoba maple and Amur maple change their color in different areas, but upon visiting the site again and other locations, I started gaining interest in the fungi species I was able to identify such as; the Veiled oyster, Lypohyllaceae, King Alfred’s cake, and so on in location 1 which is the university of Manitoba lake forest, and the shaggy mane fungi I found in location 2 at an open field at the University of Manitoba, and the shell fungi I found in on a couple of dead log next to the open field and the university of Manitoba.
Location 1 University of Manitoba Lake Forest, temp +20 degrees Celsius, visited on the 27th of Sept 2023.
Various types of fungi were found on the trees, soil, and dead logs. Some fungi seem to have been withering away, while others seem to be thriving.
The forest contains various types of trees: decaying and healthy trees with shrubs and grasses on the ground. The forest has a lake with some trees facing the lake in a downward slope of soil going into the lake, various trees such as Manitoba maple, Amur maple, tall grass prairies, curly dock, and so on making up the forest vegetation, while fungi such as Hysizyaus ulmaris (elm oyster), Pleurotus dryinus (veiled oyster), Daldinia concentrica (King Alfred’s cake) and so on. I also observed a couple of people walking along the trail and a student standing by the lake, but not much human activity was ongoing in the forest.
Location 2 open field at the University of Manitoba campus, visited on Sept 27th of 2023.
The only fungi I could observe in the open field was Coprinus Comatus (shaggy mane) growing on the open field which has a lot of green grass and small plants and flowers. The fungi seem to be spread all over the field. The field had no tall trees or tall buildings that would provide shade on the field. As this is an open field, there wasn’t any human activity happening on the field, but there was a walkway for people to pass by instead of stepping on the grass.
For the sake of sample and data collection, I will focus on location 2, the open field at the University of Manitoba. I hypothesize that temperature will influence fungal abundance and will exhibit seasonal shifts in abundance and distribution. The response variable will be the fungal species, and the explanatory variable will be environmental factors such as the weather temperature. This experiment is a continuous variable because it will be measuring the abundance of fungal species based on temperature change.IMG_0045 IMG_4967
I think this topic sounds interesting and has a lot of potential but you are missing some key pieces. You note all 3 sites are different but what is your gradient between the three sites? Is your response variable diversity or abundance of fungi or both? How specifically will you measure this? You need to be more specific with your explanatory variable as well, what is it exactly and how ill you measure it? What is your sample unit?