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Ecology Lab Hypothesis

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urpose: The purpose is to determine the size of populations of owls and mice and their model interactions between populations. Background: A prey is an animal that is hunted and ate by a predator. A predator is an animal that eats smaller animals. For example, a mouse is eaten by an owl; the mouse would be the prey and the owl would be the predator. Prey are based on the number of predators and predators are based on the number of prey; they both depend on one another’s population. Hypothesis: If the owl population increases, then the mice population will decrease. Materials & Procedure: Day 1: 1. Cut out the grid of squares that are each 1 cm on a side. Each sheet contains over 400 squares; you will need at least 200 squares, each of which …show more content…

The mice are owls main food source. As the mice population increases and decreases so do the owl population. As the graph shows, it proves the mice increasing along with the owls. After the third generation, the mice start to decrease because the owls started increasing with the mice. Therefore, the mice and owls regulate off of one another’s population. Error Analysis: While doing the mouse and owl population lab, many errors could have occurred. For example, counting the mice that the owls consumed wrong or the paper mice sticking to a person’s fingers that caused them to miscount. Post-Lab Questions: 1.) The mouse population during the first few generations increased along with the owls increasing. 2.) After many more generations, the mouse population drastically decreased and the owls followed with the mice and decreased as well. 3.) The trends in the populations’ size of the mice and owls went along with one another. Both populations of each animal both increase and decrease at nearly the same rate. 4.) If there was an unlabeled graph of owl and mice population, people could easily tell which curve represented the owls and which represented the mice because mice reproduce faster. Therefore, there will always be more mice than

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In general, all the predators and prey (regardless of habitat) began with the same amount of population. For instance, there are a total of six predators (2 had forks, 2 had spoons, and 2 had knives)—regardless of habitat, Meaning each predator contributed to 33% of the population (Tables 1A, 2A). For prey, each bean contributed 25% of the population (Tables 1B, 2B). However, as generation progressed, differences began to appear.

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Figures 1-3, 5-6, and 8-9 all showed a change, but not as large as their counterparts. This was due to the fact that the mice were usually cleaning themselves at in this group during the control. Figure 8 shows the smallest change between the two groups with a value of 0.0002. This figure represents a Cage A Yellow Mouse, which also had one of the lower body weights.

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Joshua Rabideau 11/10/2016 BIOL 380 – Lab: Monday Black-Capped Chickadee Foraging Habits There are numerous organisms and interactions occurring within any ecosystem. Many times, the interactions between organisms and habitats are based on the energy needs of the organisms. In this experiment, a null hypothesis that the Black-capped Chickadee forages on various trees at random. Upon data analysis of the gathered information, it can be determined that the Black-capped chickadee were not choosing foraging sites at random. The results of a chi square test gave a value of 19,890 which is significantly larger than the 16.812 value needed to void the null hypothesis with six degrees of freedom; the probability that this variation was due to chance is less than .01.

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Part IV: Question) The primary factor controlling rodent population growth may be the fact that there is longer a large number of predators for them

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The data collected from previous classes had a total of 77 owl pellets that were dissected. Out of the 77 total of owl pellets that were examined, a total of 137 rodents skulls were found in the owl pellets compared to a total of 32 nonrodent skulls that were uncovered in the owl pellet. The data in Figure 1, demonstrates the average total number of rodent skulls compared to average nonrodent skulls found in the final spreadsheet from the total number of owl pellets dissected in each class. On average, the amount of rodent skull prey caught is 1.80 in an owl pellet in a night compared to 0.42 nonrodent prey skulls found in an owl

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818 Words | 4 Pages

Our neighbor's youngest bird was relatively similar to our youngest bird in the sense that both had a smaller front wing and a larger back one. They varied with small changes in wing size or position. However, overall the best flying shape among the groups we observed was a larger back wing and a smaller front wing. Predict the appearance of your youngest bird's descendants if… The selection conditions remain the same and the longest flying bird survives to produce the most offspring.

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818 Words | 4 Pages

This meant that in the population there were already ten different color of prey that occurred naturally. However, when the environment was a blue background with colorful flowers and butterflies, many of the different colored prey had gone extinct and the red prey had the highest number of survivors. Also, environment two was pink, white, and black plaid and the prey that had the most number of survivors in that environment was white. This demonstrates that depending on the environment, different variations of a trait would be successful. It also demonstrates that the adaptations in this experiment depended on the environments.

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Journal Day Entry Two While having a long great discussion with my girlfriend about a topic that I would have never come across my mind, it was about further education. It is true, there are many different ways to receive education for example, trade school, online, university, community college, junior college, or even military. Out of all that was mentioned earlier, the most popular forms of education is online, going to a university or a community college, or even joining the military. It is unusual to me to hear about junior and trade school.

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Predictions The null hypothesis for the experiment is that the presence of spines does not affect the rate of the protection from predators. It is assumed that individuals without any spines will be eaten to a greater extent than control group. In this way, my null hypothesis will be rejected, because the presence of spines of Hemicentetes semispinosus will affect the rate of the protection from predators. It is possible that all individuals of Hemicentetes semispinosus will be eaten in the same rate.

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If I could have done this experiment, I would have probably move the elephant and mouse to large closed area. Perhaps a room, I would then place the elephant in the room with the mouse. That way the results would be clearer because there would be no outside distractions that could deter the accuracy of the results. Some future research questions that could arise from this study are: what makes elephants afraid of mice? Another question could be, does the elephant’s fear of mice stem from poor eyesight or is it purely

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249 Words | 1 Pages

Conferring the results, we can deduce through correlative analysis that as the total harvest drops, the number of deer increases by a slightly significant variable. This means that deer harvest, is inversely proportional to deer density. The disadvantages of having too much deer in the population should be noted. They lead to lack of food which is a typical cause-and-effect relationship. Deer, being herbivores, feeds on plants directly to obtain food.

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Introduction Predation is a biological interaction between two organisms of different species in a community in which one acts as a predator and captures and feeds on the other, the prey. Predator-prey relationships keep animal populations in balance. When prey populations increase more food is available for predators, and they increase in number as well. An increase in predators triggers a decrease in prey populations. As prey populations decrease predator populations soon follow as their food supply diminishes.

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The environment plays a factor in a species over time because animals may not be made for that environment. We can tell how a species has changed over time by looking at the history. All of these four factors can show us how a species has changed over time. Individuals that win competitions are able to pass on their genes to future generations, which means they can pass their traits down. In the fruit loop activity, we found that the fit and fast individuals were more likely to survive.

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This occurs when limiting factors slows down the growth rate. It predicts that when a population size is small or large, the growth rate will be small and that the population growth will be at its highest when it is at an intermediate level relative to the carrying capacity. Lastly, the regulation of Population Growth; which has to do with the limiting of population growth of a long term by a mixture of density-independent and density-dependent factors. Factors of density-dependent intensify as the population density increases. On the other hand, regardless the population size, density-independent factors affect the same percentage of

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1891 Words | 8 Pages

The objective is to determine foraging preference of ants by observing and measuring their selection between three different sugar concentrated solutions (5%, 15%, and 30%). The hypothesis is that ants prefer high sugar concentrated solutions than low sugar concentrated solutions. The prediction is that most ants will prefer high concentrated solution (30%) than the less concentrated solution

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