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What is the Biodiversity of Two Different Habitats?

Do not remove or mark in the box below. This is for grading purposes.
39 pts, 100% Sep 28-> Graded: 39 pts, 100%

Teacher Rubric Settings: t03960fffp knorris2 _

39 pts Points Possible:

Purpose

To determine the biodiversity of a habitat by using Simpson’s Index to calculate the area’s

species richness and evenness

Hypothesis

Create a hypothesis that includes a quantitative independent variable.

If the student and teacher parking lots are compared, the student lot will have a greater

biodiversity by calculating the Simpson’s Index of each lot because the student parking lot is the

larger lot out of the two, meaning there is a greater probability for different species because there

are more individuals in the area.

Lab Procedure:

1. Prepare a data table that will assist in the data collection process.

2. Each group is responsible for sampling both the Student Lot and the Teacher Lot.

Hopefully there will not be much immigration or emigration (cars coming and going)

during our sampling time.

3. Each group will randomly choose a section of the parking lot to sample (50 cars). The 50

cars in your sample MUST BE adjacent to each other, not interspersed throughout the lot.
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No individual car may be skipped.

4. Your group will determine how you will be classifying your species of cars. (e.g.Make,

model, type, color). If you are having difficulty classifying a "species", you must come to

a decision as a team.

5. When complete, you will come together as a class and share the data collected from your

section

6. Individually calculate the Simpson’s Diversity Index for each parking lot. It is YOUR

responsibility to organize the data into a chart and do all of the calculations on your

OWN. You may do calculations by hand or use a spreadsheet. You must provide an

example of each calculation in your lab write-up.

7. Individually determine the Species Richness, Relative Species Evenness, and Relative

Level of Species Dominance for each lot. These, along with the Diversity calculations,

will be included in the Data Processing/Presentation section of your lab write up.

Data and Analysis

Table 1

The Biodiversity, Richness, Evenness, and Dominance of The Student Lot and Teacher Lot at

Heritage High School

Student Lot Teacher Lot

D=.16 D=.14

Simpson’s Index Very high diversity Very high diversity

(see table 2) (see table 3)

Species Richness There were 8 out of the 10 species in the There were 9 out of the 10 species in the
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student lot (red, white, light blue, teacher lot (red, white, light blue, green,

orange, silver, gray, black, and dark silver, gray, black, dark blue, tan).

blue).

The relative evenness of the student lot The relative evenness of the teacher lot

Relative Evenness is .0204 (see Calculations for table 2). is .015 (see Calculations for table 3)

The most dominant species in the

Relative Level of
The most dominant species in the teacher lot was the silver cars.
Species
student lot was the white and silver cars.
Dominance

Table 2

Types and Amount of Cars in Heritage High School’s Student Lot

Student Lot

Color of Cars ni ni(ni-1)

Red 3 6

White 7 42

Light Blue 1 0

Green 0 0

Orange 1 0

Silver 7 42

Gray 3 6

Black 1 0
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Dark Blue 2 2

Tan 0 0

Total 25 98

Calculations for table 2

Red: 3(3-1)=6 White: 7(7-1)=42 Light Blue: 1(1-1)=0 Green: 0(0-1)=0

Orange: 1(1-1)=0 Silver: 7(7-1)=42 Gray: 3(3-1)=6 Black: 1(1-1)=0

Dark Blue: 2(2-1)=2 Tan: 0(0-1)=0 Total: 6+42+0+0+0+42+6+0+2+0=98

98/(25(25-1))=0.1633333333

Species Evenness: .1633333333/8=.02041667

Table 3

Types and Amounts of Cars in Heritage High School’s Teacher Lot

Teacher Lot

Color of Cars ni ni(ni-1)

Red 3 6

White 5 20

Light Blue 1 0

Green 1 0

Orange 0 0

Silver 7 42

Gray 2 2
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Black 4 12

Dark Blue 1 0

Tan 1 0

Total 25 82

Calculations for table 3

Red: 3(3-1)=6 White: 5(5-1)=20 Light Blue: 1(1-1)=0 Green: 1(1-1)=0

Orange: 0(0-0)=0 Silver: 7(7-1)=42 Gray: 2(2-1)=2 Black: 4(4-1)=12

Dark Blue: 1(1-0)=0 Tan: 1(1-1)=0 Total: 6+20+0+0+0+42+2+12+0+0=82

82/(25(25-1))=.1366666667

Species Evenness: .1366666667/9=.01518519

Figure A

Conclusion
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After calculating the Simpson’s Index of the student parking lot and the teacher parking

lot of Heritage High School, the teacher lot has been concluded to be the most biodiverse lot at

the school. Through the process of representative sampling, 25 cars in the student lot (parking lot

behind the school) and 25 cars in the teacher lot (parking lot in front of the school) for a total of

50 cars. The cars were surveyed by their color, which each color represented a different species

in the experiment. After gathering all the data, the biodiversity of the cars were calculated using

the Simpson’s Index, which shows how biodiverse an ecosystem is by comparing the numbers

on a scale from 0 to 1. The closer to 0 a number is after the calculations, the more biodiverse it

is, and the closer to 1 a number is after calculations, the less biodiverse it is. The student lot had

a species diversity of .16 and the teacher lot had a species diversity of .14, making the teach lot

more biodiverse by .02 (see table 1). However, while the cars surveyed may be representative of

teachers and students based on their location, the student cars surveyed were closest to the

school, meaning they belonged to seniors. The sample does not represent the junior population

that drives to school, meaning there could be more or less of different species if the sample was

different. Some teachers also park in the back parking lot, so some cars surveyed could have

been teacher cars, which is not representative of the student population at all. If the experiment

was to be conducted again, the cars should be checked for student parking passes hanging from

their rearview mirrors, and the cars should be randomly sampled to get a better representative

sample. While the experiment futures the knowledge about biodiversity, it also raises questions

about if there are more species than just the ones shown in the sample and if a different sample

was taken, would the results be the same.

Outside of the parking lots of a high school, conducting an experiment to find

biodiversity can apply to sampling species in ecosystems as their habitat is being destroyed,
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specifically deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. According to Mueller, Paula, Mirza,

Rodrigues, Nusslein, and Bohannan; all scientists who research either ecology, microbiology,

biology, or oceanography at different universities across the globe, deeming them credible; a

change in how land is used is a great threat to biodiversity around the world. Tropical

ecosystems are greatly affected by how the use of land changes, specifically soil fungal

biodiversity. In their study, they sampled some soil from three different parts of the Amazon and

looked at different genes in it to examine the changes in the fungal species there. After studying

the soil, they concluded that the fungal community in each area were very different from one

another. They also discovered that in two of the areas, a certain fungal species, the

Basidiomycota, is decreasing (Muller, et al.). Through calculating biodiversity of fungal species

in the Amazon rainforest, Muller and her team were able to discover the decreasing of a certain

species in the rainforest. While they used a different method than what the lab experiment used,

they could still use the Simpson’s Index to figure out how diverse the fungal population is and

find the richness of the area.

There are many varying perspectives on biodiversity and how habitat destruction is

affecting it. Muller and her team would agree that biodiversity is threatened by the destruction of

habitats, mostly because it changes how the whole ecosystem works. They would also argue that

plants and fungus interactions are the way to figure out how to conserve the rainforest. Rodrigues

and team, who wrote an article about how the Amazon rainforest’s microbial community is also

affected by change in land use, would agree with Muller and her team and would tell them to

also look at the microbes in the soil when assessing biodiversity. Loreau and her team, who

wrote a paper about how biodiversity loss will affect how an ecosystem functions in the future,

would agree with the previous two perspectives, but would also remind them that they need to
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look at abiotic factors too and processes in the ecosystem.

Works Cited

Loreau, M., et al. “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning: Current Knowledge and Future

Challenges.” Science, vol. 294, no. 5543, 26 Oct. 2001, pp. 804–808.,

doi:10.1126/science.1064088.
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Mueller, Rebecca C, et al. “Links between Plant and Fungal Communities across a Deforestation

Chronosequence in the Amazon Rainforest.” The ISME Journal, vol. 8, no. 7, 23 Jan.

2014, pp. 1548–1550., doi:10.1038/ismej.2013.253.

Rodrigues, Jorge L. M., et al. “Conversion of the Amazon Rainforest to Agriculture Results in

Biotic Homogenization of Soil Bacterial Communities.” Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences, vol. 110, no. 3, 29 Nov. 2012, pp. 988–993.,

doi:10.1073/pnas.1220608110.
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