Post 6: Ongoing Observations

So far, my data collection has been going relatively well. The methods are easy to implement and I don’t have many physical obstacles that could hinder my study area. Zonation gradient does not seem to influence ant absence/presence as I found them in each ecotone, and elevation is not a factor to consider in my study because it is too minimal across the study site.

I am, however, finding that my data does not seem to fully confirm or support my hypothesis, as many factors affect patterns that I am to observe, and this will need to be addressed in the discussion of my research.

Some of these factors are:

• My predictor variables are not as straight forward as I anticipated; while vegetation cover could potentially affect ant presence, I found that it was most difficult to observe presence/absence in 100% vegetation cover of my quadrats. Additionally, disturbance was an issue and this was a significant flag when I noticed that pocket gophers created mounds of dirt of which were mostly present in the most vegetated zones, creating discontinuity. This type of disturbance favored my hypothesis only because the uplift of soil above the vegetation enables ant activity and exposure.
• Precipitation is a factor that affects soil moisture (another predictor variable), however, the issue here isn’t the soil moisture as much as it is the daily precipitation, where they are not seen.
• Another climate factor is temperature. As it is getting closer to “hibernation’ where ants start to slow down biological function, this phenological timing will affect my future findings. This might become another factor to consider in my data collection.
• Lastly, The goal of my study is to identify if there is a correlation with ant habitat preference on an environmental gradient. Certainly, ant species behave differently, and hopefully this will not cause a fundamental flaw in my overall hypothesis.