Effects of Nicotine and Caffeine on Isopod Behavior

URBAN FARMER SERVICE LEARNING PROJECT

This project was part of the Campus Community Farm's regular Friday work party.  I attended on 2/9/18 for 2 1/2 hours.  Lia Andrews was the event organizer that day, her email is: lia.andrews@email.edcc.edu.

Learning to Carve - Photo Credit: Leah Esperance

The college sponsored this activity with the goals of providing students with hands-on experiences with gardening, outdoor cooking and tribal culture.  Today's activities included adding a new layer of compost to the wormbin, garden soil work and carving ceremonial oars for the local Native American tribes.

Carving tools and carved wood

At this event, I shredded some newspaper to be used as habitat in the wormbin.  This paper is layered in before adding a new layer of compost.  I also participated in the outdoor kitchen area in carving wood for a potential ceremonial musical clapper.


This event affected my thoughts on the role of science in society by bringing me and my senses back to the fundamental basics of nature and communal life.  When we buy meat or produce at the grocery store, we are not necessarily thinking about where it comes from.  The farm provided both a communal area and garden space, which brought people together and close to the source of food.  They were telling us how they recently baked pumpkins in the underground oven and then further prepared the pumpkin ingredients into a pie and cooked it in the brick pizza oven.  The food literally went from the garden space, 10 feet to the underground oven, 5 feet to the brick oven and directly into the community members digestive system where metabolism of these great ingredients could happen.  As a former gardener, I know growing food is not easy.  It takes the right kind of soil, the right knowledge about bugs to naturally prevent them from munching the plants, the right kind of watering system and knowledge about when and how to harvest.  This knowledge comes from understanding the science behind growing things.  The communal aspects can be explained from the psychology of how community living is healthier and more beneficial.

The part where we added material to the worm bin was brief, but it completed the loop of returning the unused food back into soil with the help of worm digestion.  This type of composting is called vermicomposting and it makes a very rich soil.

Shredding newspaper and layering it into the wormbin.

The worms used are red wigglers (Eisenia fetida) and they are part of the Earthworm family with phyla: annelida. This type of worm is a triploblast and because it has a coelom, it has a more complex digestive system then the flat and round worms.  The compost material goes in the worm and then the worms digestive enzymes and pathway allows this material to be broken down to give the worm a good amount of nutrients.  What it does not use is sent out the back end, known as cast-away, which is really nutrient soil for growing plants.  With the help of worm bins, individuals can have their own composting unit at home, to turn their compost directly into soil.  Below is a model I found on the internet, that I would love to have on my back deck.  It has the added plus of never having to touch the worms to harvest the soil.  It would be super convenient to add juicing pulp to the bin and the worms would quickly do their magic and move up to the higher tiers to where the newer compost is located.  The seasoned

Amazon Choice Worm Bin

soil would be on the bottom, wormless and ready for removal for potting.  Not only would this ensure that my compost doesn't end up in a land fill where due to lack of oxygen, does not decay, it would complete the loop at home for me so I could have soil ready for growing plants.  The worms multiply and if the temps do not get too low, never need to be replaced.  The community farm gets a weekly shipment of this compost from campus and they are turning it over to soil to be used in the garden.  They are also educating and inspiring the public to similar processes at home.  What's holding me back from getting this worm bin then? 

This is interdisciplinary because it includes the biology of worm digestion, the chemistry of how these macromolecules are broken down and used by the worm and the physics/engineering of creating bins where the right conditions are met.

The biological questions that were raised during my service project were: 1) What family are red wrigglers part of (indeed they are a type of earth worm), 2)How long does it take for the compost to turn into potable soil 3) What type of digestion happens in the worms, 4) How often and what type of reproduction happens.