Travel Notes: Field Trip to Wuling Mountain

As a biology-loving person, I finally wrote a biology-themed article~

Multiple pictures & long articles, early warning of traffic flow, please be careful

After the final exam, we The great biology teacher at the school was kind enough to spend time and effort organizing a field trip to animals and plants for us. The number of places is limited, so I was fortunate enough to go to Wuling Mountain with more than 20 people from our school for inspection.

Our biology teacher packed a trunk with all the equipment needed for the field trip (insect nets, specimen boxes, poison bottles, various experimental tools...) and drove off.

We put our bags on our backs and took the bus from the south gate of Wuling Mountain Scenic Area. We set off at noon on July 2nd and arrived in the evening. Because we were here to study, we stayed in an ordinary small hotel, and the price was not high, so we didn’t have to ask too much about food and accommodation. (Spreading hands)

Again, we are here to learn, so lectures are indispensable.

On the second day of the inspection, we got up early and learned to identify plants in the mountain forests around the hotel.

Plants are mainly identified by their flowers. For example, in the picture above, it looks like a daylily from the Liliaceae family. In addition, it can also be identified by traits such as stamens, leaf shape, phyllotaxis, ovary, and carpel. For example, when you see the pinnate leaves with sporangia on the back, you know it is a fern, and when you see the umbel, you know that the plant belongs to the Umbelliferae family. This is just a rough classification method using several obvious traits. The real classification search requires the use of Flora, which requires observation of all the traits of a certain plant.

The search process of Flora:

1. First distinguish between the phylum Pteridophyta and the phylum Seed Plants.

2. If the seeds are exposed, it belongs to the subphylum Gymnosperm, otherwise it belongs to the subphylum Angiosperm.

3. Determine the monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants based on stems, leaves and flowers

4. The most difficult step: determine the family through inflorescence, phyllotaxis, ovary, carpel, fruit, etc. The search in this step can focus on reproductive organs or nutritional organs.

After a day of inspection, we identified several typical plants in the Wuling Mountain area.

To study insects, you must first capture them. We can take advantage of the moth's tendency to attract light and use light traps to capture it.

Moths are very well-behaved and will not break free even if they are pinched directly into your hand. In order to protect the insect's wings to the maximum extent and prevent the insect from struggling, certain skills are required. First hold the insect down, and then pinch the base of the insect's wing with the thumb and index finger of the other hand.

The next step is to kill the moth. The method is to inject a small amount of alcohol into the insect's chest or abdominal cavity. The operation method is as follows. Within seconds, the insect dies.

Moths, which are phototactic insects, are easier to catch, but other insects require the use of insect nets.

After the insect enters the net, a poison bottle containing ethyl acetate or cyanide needs to be held in the net. After the insect is "stunned" for 1 to 2 minutes, remove the poison bottle and hold the poison in your hand. The bottle goes into the insect net and the insects are poured into the poison bottle. Then the insects will die quietly in the environment of high concentration of poison in the poison bottle...

After investigating the plants and insects, we divided into groups to conduct research on the subject. The topic of our group is "Insect Mimicry". The research content is to study the number of mimicking insects, non-mimicking insects, and mimicked insects on several different plants to determine whether the mimicking insects are successful.

First we identified three types of insects:

Then we identified three types of plants:

Start researching - actually squatting next to the plants and trying our best to Be silent, wait for pollinators to visit and take notes.

The three-day field trip ended quickly in a sense of freshness. This is the first time our school has arranged an off-campus research project. I am fortunate to participate in it, and I am very happy and satisfied to have achieved these results. My beloved biology teacher said that during this event he wanted to move “the animal and plant internship of the National Normal University School of Biological Sciences into the middle school.” I think he succeeded in doing this.

We also experienced biologists’ rigorous observation and classification methods of animals and plants. When we were learning about plant classification the next day, we spent the whole morning looking through flora and could only identify a few plants. However, there is always beauty behind the complexity. I think I fell in love with biology because there are always beautiful animals and plants in nature that you have never seen before. Continuous exploration and understanding of creatures around the world are the feelings of naturalists.

I hope I can inherit this feeling.

Students may be curious about cost and itinerary preparation, so I will give you some suggestions. This four-day and three-night trip includes food, accommodation, transportation and tickets. Excluding the school reimbursement, the total *** cost is 600 yuan. The premise is that you have hiking shoes, a light jacket for summer hiking, leggings, binoculars, and The experimental equipment is still prepared by the school. If this is your first inspection, the equipment is not complete, and you still want to live in a better place, you may be able to stop it with 2,000 yuan. So loving nature also comes at a cost...

Other suggestions, don’t have too many requirements for food and drink in your accommodation, you can bring some food by yourself. Like our experiential field trip this time, we have a hotel to stay in, a kitchen for cooking, and the terrain of the field is not very steep. It is better than the difficult camping trip in the wild with unknown road conditions. When it comes to taking photos, a SLR is definitely the best, but I deeply understand the fatigue of using a SLR with one hand and catching insects with the other hand, and having to always be ready to take out a telescope and a plant illustration. So SLR is not very recommended.

Thank you everyone for reading, it would be better if you click like.