Practical - species richness on the school field - How are populations affected by conditions in an ecosystem? - GCSE Combined Science Revision - OCR 21st Century

Practical - species richness on the school field

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Greg Foot investigates the distribution and abundance of organisms in an ecosystem

To compare the species richness on the school field in areas in which the grass is regularly cut with areas left untreated.

Choose a starting point on the school field in an area where the grass is often cut
Use numbers to generate a set of coordinates to place your first .
Count the number of different plant within this quadrat (the species richness).
Return to your starting position and repeat steps two and three a further 14 times using different random numbers.
Repeat steps one to four for a part of the school field in which the grass is infrequently cut.
Compare your results by calculating a for each location.

Quadrat number	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Number of plant species per quadrat on cut area of school field	1	2	1	2	3	1	3	1	1	1	2	3	2	1	1
Number of plant species per quadrat on uncut area of school field	3	2	4	6	1	1	1	4	5	3	6	4	5	3	4

Number of plant species per quadrat on cut area of school field
1	1
2	2
3	1
4	2
5	3
6	1
7	3
8	1
9	1
10	1
11	2
12	3
13	2
14	1
15	1

Number of plant species per quadrat on uncut area of school field
1	3
2	2
3	4
4	6
5	1
6	1
7	1
8	4
9	5
10	3
11	6
12	4
13	5
14	3
15	4

What are the totals and means for the two different locations?

What conclusions can you draw here? [4 marks]

What limitations might there be in drawing these conclusions?