User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
The results of my field data were easy to summarize and visually represent in tables and graphs. The bar graph I submitted summarizes bird abundance (number of individuals) observed at the three different sites along the urban gradient representing different levels of urbanization. I predicted that bird abundance would follow a gradient with the lowest number of individuals observed in the urbanized area (Site 1) and the highest number of individuals observed in the natural area (Site 3) . When I initially graphed this data I found that the highest abundance was in fact at the most urban site. However, further examination of the data indicated that this was due to the large portion of observations (roughly 2/3) in the urban area that consisted of rock doves. As a result, the graph I created displays the overall abundance along the urbanization gradient but highlights the proportion of rock doves at each site so that the underlying trend (when removing rock doves from the examination at all sites in which they were observed) becomes apparent, which confirms my prediction.
