Download AP Environmental Science - Livingston Public Schools

CP Environmental Science
“Auto”-Diversity Lab
2015-16
Name: _____________________________
Date: ______________
Per:________
Purpose:
To determine the difference in biodiversity between staff and student cars
Materials: vehicles parked at the school, calculator, graph paper
Background:
A central theme in ecology is biodiversity, which often serves as a measure of the
overall health of an ecosystem. Declining biodiversity can indicate that the
ecosystem is undergoing some type of environmental stress. Further study may
then help to pinpoint that stress.
In this investigation your group will collect data from the vehicles in the student
and faculty areas of parking at the school for comparison.
You need to begin with a good hypothesis that predicts which parking lot would
have a higher “biodiversity” of cars, the senior or faculty parking lot?
Experiments of this nature attempt to agree or disagree with the hypothesis.
State your hypothesis here:
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Procedure:
We want to determine the biodiversity of cars in our parking lots at LHS.
Let’s consider each car make (Ford, Honda, Toyota, etc.) as a new species.
Compare the biodiversity of:
POPULATION A- Senior Parking Lot (on Madonna Dr.)
POPULATION B- Faculty Parking Lot (by Cafeteria)
Your team will need to count all the various species (Ford, Honda, etc.) in each
parking lot to determine the biodiversity.
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CP Environmental Science
Data table:
POPULATION ASenior Parking Lot (Madonna)
Add car “species” as needed
2015-16
POPULATION BFaculty Cafeteria Lot
Add car “species” as needed
Car make
(“SPECIES”)
# in Population A
Car make
(“SPECIES”)
# in Population B
Ford
Honda
Ford
Toyota
Honda
Chevrolet
Toyota
VW
Dodge
Hyundai
BMW
Mercedes
GMC
Jeep
Chevrolet
VW
Dodge
Hyundai
BMW
Mercedes
GMC
Jeep
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CP Environmental Science
2015-16
Analysis:
1. Create a DOUBLE-BAR GRAPH that illustrates the differences in species richness (#
of organisms), and species diversity (# of species) between Populations A and B.
 Label your x- and y-axis
 Title your graph appropriately
 Include a key or legend to differentiate between the two populations
 Use a ruler when constructing your bars
2. Complete the calculations below:
Population A
Population B
Total # Organisms
Total # Species
Predominant
Species*
% of Predominant
to rest of
Population^
*Species with the highest number of individuals in the population
^ (Number of Predominant Species / Total Population) x 100
3. Which population had the higher biodiversity of automobiles? __________________
4. a) How well did the results compare to your original hypothesis?
b) What factors would influence the variety of “species” in the parking lots?
c) What further experiments could you do based off this experiment? (Hint: we only
looked at the make of the car. Are there any other aspects of an automobile worth
investigating between staff and students?)
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