Freshwater Biodiversity Lab Report
ECOLOGY CLASS
The RUBRIC is your SECOND BEST FRIEND (Excel is your first, of course). I know that it is confusing since we did not do our own data collection, so here are a few tips on how to handle the rubric:
1. For the introduction, get the necessary information from the lecture we gave (see the ppt. on Canvas), the literature sources we provided (also Canvas), and your own research (feel free to Google things — but use reliable sources if you cite them in your paper!). The “context” of this study is essentially to use the insect collection data and weather/water data to draw conclusions about the water conditions and the health of Thompson Bayou on campus, where these collections were done. Form a hypothesis about this, comparing June vs. Feb. data – what makes them different?
2. For the methods, describe Thompson Bayou briefly (we did our second plant collection there, FYI) as well as the water and weather conditions. Use the video (on Canvas!) and the information given in lecture to describe the collection methods. I know this is confusing since we did not do it ourselves — you can be brief (but thorough) in this paragraph. Also give the equations used — they are described in both the lecture and on the first page of the rubric.
3. In the results and discussion section, talk about your calculations, i.e., “the diversity (H’) in June was ABC, while in February it was XYZ” and talk about why you got ABC and XYZ, based on your hypothesis. What does this imply about the health of the bayou? For paragraph 4, you obviously don’t know what some issues in our techniques might be, but you can speculate (ahem, would a larger sample size have helped…?). Also speculate on additional studies we could do (would it help to sample more often? or in a different location?).
4. Your tables will be the two tables of the collection data — pull these directly from Excel — and a table showing the results of your calculations of N, S, H’, H’max, and J’. As stated in the rubric, your results need to be correct.
