How does the variety of flowers affect the number of pollinators?

How does the variety of flowers affect the number of pollinators?

Experiment Parts:

Independent Variable: Variety of flower species

Dependent Variable: Number of pollinators

Constants: Weather, daylight, time of day, measure pollinators for same amount of time

Control Group: Plots without flowers (although it turned out there were none completely void of flowers)

Null Hypothesis: The variety of flowers will not affect the number of pollinators

Alternative Hypothesis: The variety of flowers will affect the number of pollinators

Background Information:

We studied pollination in the prairie. Pollination is where pollen is moved from flower to flower so that plants can reproduce. There are a variety of ways that plants can pollinate, a common way is certain organisms passing the pollen from plant to plant themselves. These organisms are known as pollinators.

Pollinators can be insects, and other creatures. A very important pollinator is the bee. Bees help move pollen when they go to collect pollen from flowers. A variety of butterflies, including the monarch, pollinate when they go to drink nectar from flowers. Beetles, flies and ants are also very important pollinators in prairie ecosystems. Birds, like hummingbirds, assist in pollination as well when they drink nectar from flowers. (“Pollinator Prairie”, 2014) (“Pollinators Final Project”, 2018)

There are a lot of direct and indirect species indirections in prairie ecosystems. Grasshoppers eat grasses and sometimes they swarm and absolutely demolish crops and areas of grass. Ants help soil and improve richness, which helps the grasses and plants. Snakes can indirectly interact with grasses positively, by eating creatures which eat plants in the prairie, keeping herbivore populations in check.

Bibliography

“Pollinator Prairie.” Pollinator.Org, 2014, www.pollinator.org/pollinator-prairie.

“KU Prairie Acre.” Prairie Acre, 20 July 2018, www.prairieacre.ku.edu, https://prairieacre.ku.edu/sites/prairieacre.drupal.ku.edu/files/docs/PollinatorsFinalProject.pdf

Description of Data Collection Methods:

The first step in collecting our data was determining the variety of flowers. This was the independent variable in our project. After discussion within our group we decided the best way to do this was to each measure 2 plots. We donned our boots and jumpsuits and went into the prairie. We identified all of the flowers using an app called “Seek”.

The next day we set out to find pollinators. This was the dependent variable in our project. We each took one plot on the first day. We went around every flower in the plot and waited for 3 minutes to see pollinators. We would note every time a pollinator would land on or near a flower. Then we counted pollinators at the other 3 plots.

Once the fieldwork was carried out we had data for our project. We had an independent and dependent variable. We also established constant variables during our time in the prairie. Some of these constants were the location, time of day, temperature, and weather.

Conclusion:

We concluded that the number of pollinators is not affected by the variety of flowers in a prairie. When we studied in the prairie how many pollinators were in each plot we found the amount of pollinators in each plot to be very close. That left us to determine that the variety of flowers does not affect the amount of pollinators. The differently treated plots ended up all containing some amount of flowers. There was a range of three or four types with around a total of 4 to 7 individual flower plants. A possible explanation for this is that pollinators do not look for a specific type of flower, they just want to find flowers in general. In the graph, no trends are visible for how the amount of flowers in different plots influence the amount of pollinators. In conclusion, the variety of flowers in the Prairie did not affect the amount of pollinators.

Next Steps:

We did have to guess on a couple parts of the data, we lost some records and notes taken. Some additional evidence we could use is probably more accurate data. We could have spent more time watching for pollinators and gained information as well. I think we could change how we counted and collected information. It was hard to put together a graph and what the setup for the graph should have been. Our information is a bit scattered so I think we could have collected and put together our data in a more organized way. If we had another couple weeks we would probably try to study more specifically different varieties of flowers. By studying their amount of visited pollinators specifically to those varieties we could have gotten the information we wanted. Our project sort of flopped when all the plots ended up having flowers despite their treatments.

Visual Director- Cayman Barnes

Editor- Sacia Edie

Documentor- Henry Hanrath