Field Trip 2

On Sept. 24th 2019, me and my Molecular Ecology class took a field trip to the coastal areas in the vicinity of Mt. Tamalpais state park. Due to a navigation error, the SUV I was driving took a wrong turn, so we missed some of the initial field trip time. Eventually however, we met up with the main group at a spring by the side of the highway near Stinson Beach. Here, Dr. Paul introduced us to a perennial form population of Mimulus guttatus in order to show us the morphological forms the species can take when exposed to constant moisture, rather than the deceased annual populations we had seen before. After this, he took us to a creek near the Muir Beach trail to show us another population that was on a different annual cycle than the ones one the serpentine barrens. As they grew on a dry creek bed during the summer season and the creek region was less dry in the summer, this population was summer-annual rather than winter-annual. Thus, by observing and sampling them, we get to see yet another form of Mimulus guttatus expression, and add more to our gene library. I also got to see a lot of native fish and crayfish in the creek, which was interesting. Overall, I got to see more new forms of Mimulus than I had seen before, which helped my better grasp the full variation of the species.

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