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After revisiting my site, I have decided to focus my study on a pond in the area. The pond is not fed by the natural spring. The pond is mostly surrounded by paper birch (Betula papyrifera) with some white spruce (Picea glauca). The pond receives quite a bit of direct sunlight. I observed cattails (Typha latifolia), mare’s-tail (Hippuris vulgaris), northern watermilfoil (Myriophyllum sibiricum) common duckweed (Lemna minor), and bladderwort (Utricularia minor). I have drawn a picture of the location of the plants around the pond in my field journal. I estimate the pond is about 10m wide by 30m long.
I spent my time observing the aquatic insects in the pond. I am not practiced at identifying them (I’m more of a plant guy), but I did recognize a water strider, water boatman, and a snail. There were other small insects swimming in the pond that I could not identify. These aquatic insects are the organisms I am going to study. I took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to study about them. In looking for a pattern I noticed a lot of activity near the edges of the pond. When I disturbed the water with a stick they would swim towards the center of the pond. I wonder if they would be more numerous closer to the edge due to more light and plant growth. The limitation is that I am unable to comment much on what aquatic insects were present deeper in the pond, as the pond is dark towards the middle. But I researched aquatic food webs and since plants and algae provide shelter and a food base it stands to reason that most insects will be located near the edges of the pond. Another factor is that there may be insects burrowed into the soil which will need to be taken into consideration when sampling.
So, I hypothesize that the aquatic insect population will be mostly dispersed along the edges of the pond. The response variable is the dispersion of aquatic insects. The explanatory variable is distance from the edge/pond shore. I believe both variables are continuous.
Hi jteare,
Your prediction is clear and falsifiable. Your predictor variable seems easy enough to measure as it is a distance. However, it seems that your response variable might be tough to measure. How would you take into consideration insects that may not travel to the surface? My suggestion would be to limit your study to one specific species of insect that is easily observed (it may be that it only lives on the surface of the pond and does not dive deeper). This way, your data might be more representative of the whole insect population in question. One thing I would take note of is the time and day in which you are sampling. Insect activity may be correlated with time of day. You might want to sample at the same time each time to eliminate this potential variability.