User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
Data collection went smoothly! I was able to collect all of my samples at the same beach. In total, I sampled 50 individual seaweeds. 5 seaweeds were sampled per tide pool, with a total of 5 dominant and 5 non dominant tide pools.
I ran into a few problems during my sampling. The biggest problem (and a source of bias) was that many of the seaweeds were clustered together and separating them was tough as the boundaries between organisms was not super clear. I therefore had to sample only the individuals that I saw as separate from the others.
Another problem that persisted was many of the individuals weighed less than a gram, which was not detected on my scale. To fix this I weighed all 5 samples together and took an average to determine weight.
Upon a rough analysis of my data, it does seem that my hypothesis is supported. The average weight of seaweed from dominant pools is greater than the average weight from non dominant pools. Yay!
