Arthropod Beetle & Ant Abundance Discussion
Using these results of this entire answer sheets, your graphs, and your knowledge of how the experiment was conducted, write up a discussion of these results for arthropod/beetle/ant abundance and overall arthropod diversity. In this discussion, you should mention the results themselves and the ecological significance of the results, if any. You should briefly mention each of the results (means / medians / statistical tests / different graphs and different ways of measuring diversity) and the ecological significance of these results.
Do a little bit of research about the biology of desert arthropods and insects especially darkling beetles (Tenebrionidae beetles) since all of the beetles we found were darkling beetles, and write about their biology. Cite any sources you use for this section at the end, and use in-text citations as well.
Generally, ecologists find more arthropods in vegetated parts of the desert compared with unvegetated microhabitats. Describe three different possible ecological reasons that explain why you would expect to find more arthropods in vegetated areas compared with open sand areas. These three reasons are hypotheses (or educated guesses). This discussion of results, discussion of desert arthropod biology and list of 3 hypotheses should be at least 1 page long.
After your discussion of these three hypotheses, describe, in detail, an ecological study that could be performed to test whether one of these three proposed hypotheses is supported or not. Your description of this proposed experiment should include the materials needed to perform the experiment, detailed explanations of how to perform the experiment, and possible (hypothetical) results for the experiment. When discussing possible results for the experiment, you should answer the question: what sort of results would show that my hypothesis is wrong? What sort of results would support my hypothesis? When you discuss the “explanation of how to perform the experiment” (above) it should contain enough detailed information such that someone who was not an ecologist and did not participate in this ecology lab could perform your new proposed experiment, based upon your written instructions alone (think about writing instructions on how to perform the proposed experiment to your business or architecture school friend, for example : ) ). You can pretend that you have a lot of funding, so budget should not be a constraint for your proposed experiment, and you have all the time and helpers you need to complete it as well. This proposed experiment should be at least 1 page long. If it is well written, it should probably be approximately two pages long. Also note that this experiment should test a reason why you would find more arthropods in vegetated regions. This experiment should not simply test whether there are more arthropods in vegetated regions or not (did that already with our lab experiment) but should instead test one reason why there are usually more arthropods in vegetated areas.
