Low Trophic Levels's Journal

The observation I chose to research further was the Hooded Sunburst Lichen, or Xanthomendoza fallax. I found that it is a type of eutrophic lichen, which proves especially useful for identifying certain attributes of arboreal environments. The one condition that was the most often mentioned was that of nitrogen levels in arboreal environments, as it allowed the investigation into how nitrogen pollution might be occurring. The health and size of lichen communities with respect to other organisms are used to determine this result.

Phylogeny placement for one of your observations:
I chose to find the phylogeny for my entry of a bee using OneZoom. It is eukaryotic bilaterally symmetric animal that has a mandible and is a hexapod winged insect. Within winged insects, it exhibits some special characteristics such as modern wing-folding (which separate it from mayflies, for example) and complete metamorphosis (separating it from true bugs).

1 unique adaptation for one of your observations:
Sails are the only mollusks of the observations that I made, it has a mucus-laden muscular foot adaptation which allows it to move on land and in water with limited friction.

1 adaptation that all observations have in common:
All of the observations that I made were eukaryotic animals that were bilaterally symmetric adaptation (Bilateria). During the Ediacaran period 570 million years ago, the most recent ancestor to all of the bilaterally symmetric animals today existed and it contains 1,407, 598 species in total including insects, spiders, worms, snails…etc

source: https://www.onezoom.org/

Placement on a phylogeny
I chose to describe Brochymena arborea on the phylogeny. It is found under insects, situated with many
stinkbug species. It is a "true bug" and associated with tree bugs and aphids. Many in it's local branch
express colorings similar to the bark of a tree.
A unique adaptation
The adaptation I had chosen was the camouflage of Brochymena arborea. Owing to their common
habitat being trees, this camouflage protects them from predators and allows them to ambush and soft
A common adaptation
One observed was multiple limbs. Evolutionarily, the presence of this allows for multiple
tasks to be completed simultaneously. The first arthropods seen with multiple legs were present around
540 million years ago.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/animal/arthropod/Evolution-and-paleontology
https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/galveston/beneficials/beneficial-31_rough_stink_bug.htm