Transcript Poster - Tripod

Effect of sunlight on biodiversity of soil
invertebrates
Loretta McNamee
Biology Department of Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN 38501
•Soil biodiversity is the number and
abundance of species inhabiting a
community
•Research has also been conducted
on the chemical properties of soil and
how it affects the invertebrate
•Carbon is a huge factor, which is
somewhat dependant on if and how
much the sun hits the soil
•Research shows that plant
abundance directly affects
invertebrate abundance, because
plants provide so many nutrients for
the soil invertebrates to survive
Objective & Hypothesis
The objective of this study is to examine
biodiversity in soil invertebrates in two
distinct communities; canopy and open
ground.
•Based on the objective, this experiment
tested the null hypothesis that sunlight
has no affect on the biodiversity of soil
invertebrates
Results
Conclusion
•As shown in Figure 1, This graph shows that the forest
data is less even then open ground data due to the steep
slope on the graph.
•It was found that there was no
difference in the two distinct
habitats
•Table 1 shows the statistical measurements of species
diversity that was needed to produce the species
abundance curve
Statistical
Measurements
Forest
Data
Open
Ground
Data
Species Richness
(S)
7
5
Shannon Diversity
Index (H)
1.48
1.23
Simpsons Diversity
Index (D)
3.20
2.93
Shannon Evenness
Index (J)
0.763
0.767
Simpsons Evenness
Index (E)
0.457
•Therefore, the null hypothesis
was accepted
•These findings disagreed with
many other studies before, in
which they found differences
in soil biodiversity.
Rank-Abundance Curve
Proportional Abundance
Introduction
0.60
0.50
0.40
Forest data
0.30
Open Ground data
0.20
•Forest data showed more
species evenness than that of
the Open Ground data
0.10
0.00
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Species Rank
0.586
Acknowledgements
Methods & Materials
•This experiment somewhat followed the basic methods
outlined by Dr. Brown in his Ecology Lab handout.
•Took 8 samples from each habitat, which was a total of 16
different soil samples.
•Each sample was placed into a Burlese funnel in order to get
the specimen out of their natural habitat of the soil
•Species were collected and counted to form the basic data
set
•T-test and Kolmogrov-Smirnov test were both used to
perform statistical analysis on the data collected.
•Dr. Morgan for his help in this
semester long process
•Dr. Brown for using his set-up
•TTU Biology Department for the
use of the media
•Emily Shrum for help along the
way