Where did you obtain your soil sample?
I obtained my soil sample from the plaza that is located in between Olin, Wold, and S&E (right outside the Starbuck’s exit). The exact coordinates are 42.8175459, -73.9278173.
I dug about 2 to 3 inches below the surface next to the shrubs that are situated outside of Olin.

Why did you choose this location?
I was working late at night in my lab in Wold, so I did not want to go too far to obtain the sample. The location did not seem like a “rich” site because only some shrubs are present there but across those plants was a closed-off ground due to the presence of asbestos, so that convinced me to pick the soil from that location.

Do you expect a lot of isolates? Why or why not?
Not necessarily. As I mentioned above, the site in that area does not have a lot of diverse plants as there are mostly shrubs and grass. However, the soil might be actually quite fertile as it is the property of Union College and the school probably uses rich soil for the plants.

Have you initial observations supported this?
On the first day, 24 hours after plating, there was a lot of growth for every different media that I used at the 10^-1 dilution. Other dilutions had some growth, but there were not as many colonies as on the 10^-1 plate. In addition, after 78 hours, I could start to see a diversity of different colonies being grown as there were plenty of different colored and shaped colonies present on the plates. This suggests that the soil was much richer than I had initially assumed.

What media did you choose? What dilutions?
For the media, I chose to use LB, 10% TSA and PDA plates. As for dilutions, I spread 100 µl of each 10^-1, 10^-2, and 10^-3 dilution for every different plate.

How did you sample differ on the different media?
Every plate had something particular that made it distinct from other plates which made the plates to be very interesting. LB had some different colonies, but the colonies that struck out were evenly spread across the plate; these colonies were brown in color and had a surrounding halo of similar color around them. 10% TSA plates had some diversity, but the colonies were rather small with less diverse pigments; there was a presence of mycoides on these plates as well. PDA plates were the most diverse, in terms of shape and color; some colonies were round and filamentous, and others were colored from light yellow to dark brown or even pink. However, most importantly, every plate contained some colonies that showed inhibition as they inhibited the growth of the neighboring colonies.

Will you need to redo any?
I did not redo any of the dilutions however I did additionally plate a new dilution,10^-4, for LB and PDA plates so that it would easier for me to count the number of colonies that grew on the plates.