User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
Create a blog post to document your ongoing field observations. Supplement your blog entry with scanned or uploaded examples from you field journal. Specific points you need to cover are:
- Identify the organism or biological attribute that you plan to study.
- Use your field journal to document observations of your organism or biological attribute along an environmental gradient. Choose at least three locations along the gradient and observe and record any changes in the distribution, abundance, or character of your object of study.
- Think about underlying processes that may cause any patterns that you have observed. Postulate one hypothesis and make one formal prediction based on that hypothesis. Your hypothesis may include the environmental gradient; however, if you come up with a hypothesis that you want to pursue within one part of the gradient or one site, that is acceptable as well.
- Based on your hypothesis and prediction, list one potential response variable and one potential explanatory variable and whether they would be categorical or continuous. Use the experimental design tutorial to help you with this.
Remember to check the “Categories” box for Post 3: Ongoing Field Observations when you post.
I plan to study the relationship between burrow site selection of ground mammals in this study. The gradient I looked at will be the elevation change in the study site. The 3 locations I looked at were the lowest elevation (the gully at the bottom of the hill), mid-elevation (mid-way up the slope) and the highest elevation (the apex of the hill). The presence of dirt mounds seems to be relatively abundant at all elevations, but did not seem to be as abundant at the bottom of the hill. The slope of the hill (which is relatively shallow) seemed to have the most evenly distributed and abundant present of dirt mounds. It is possible the site selection is due to moisture content- the bottom of the hill would have the highest moisture content, and could be at risk of flooding. It may also be due to predator influence; at the top of the hill there would be more opportunity to see predators before they see the prey, where as at the bottom the predators such as birds of prey, may have the advantage from surrounding tree stands. Another possibility is that the burrow site selection is based on food items, as pocket gophers tunnel and eat the roots of the plants above. Despite this concern, at a glance there seems to be relative uniform distribution of plant species throughout the slope of the hill.
I hypothesize that the burrow site selection has a relationship to the elevation gradient of the site. I predict we will see a higher abundance of burrows at higher elevations where the risk of flooding is minimal, and a lower abundance of burrows at a low elevation where the risk of flooding is higher. In this hypothesis, the response variable is abundance of burrows and the explanatory variable is the elevation, and therefore moisture content of the site. Due to a lack of techonolgy to sample this, elevation will be categorical (high, medium, low). It would be preferential to have this as continuous, but I do not have the equipment or resources for topographical information.