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Visual director: Ariel
Editor: Ruby
Documenter: Seongmin
Scientific Question: Depending on the quantity of flowers planted does the type of animals that live on the prairie change?
Data
Data
Experiment:
Plot 13(Seeded Grasses Only)
Grasshopper (2)
Moth(1)
Plot 1(Grasses and Forbes)
Yellow/green beetle w/ black spots (2)
Green beetle (1)
Light green grasshopper (1)
Red fly w/ stinger (1)
Small red spider (1)
Yellow grasshopper (1)
Moth (2)
Plot 7(Grasses and 2x Forbes)
Grasshopper(3)
Butterfly(3)
Spiders(2)
Yellow garden spider(1)
Bees(3)
Gray stink bug(1)
caterpillars (1)
Additional Data:
Plot 6(Seeded Grasses Only)
Grasshopper (1)
Plot 12(Grasses and Forbes)
Moth (1)
Bee (2)
Jumping spider (1)
Grasshopper (2)
Plot 18(Grasses and 2x Forbes)
Grasshopper (2)
Bird (1)
Graphs
Seeded grasses only
Seeded grasses only
Grasses and forbs
Grasses and forbs
Grasses and 2x forbs
Grasses and 2x forbs
Background information
Background information
Larger prairies are usually home to more mammals like rabbits, elk, prairie dogs, and sometimes coyotes. The Free State prairie is on the smaller side so we didn't expect to see much of those, mostly insects.
Our question was “depending on the quantity of flowers planted (on the plots), do the type of animals that live in the prairie change?” We were interested in this question because it’s fun to explore and see the animals that live in the prairie.
FSHS has a prairie that was created in 2013 and contains 18 different plots. Out of the 18, there are 6 of each of the 3 types of plot. Seeds grasses only, grasses and forbs, and grasses and 2x forbs.
(Free State Prairie, n.d.)
Yellow Garden Spider
Reasoning
Reasoning
In the plots with grasses and 2x forbs, plots 7 and 18, had the most amount of animals spotted. The total number of animals spotted in those two plots was 17.
The quantity of animals in the prairie changes with the number of flowers. I think the insects changed with the flowers because there are more complex flowers which more insects and live on.
In the plots with the least flowers, seeded grasses only, we only counted a total of 4 animals. The more flowers a plot has, the more uncommon and diverse the animal population gets. For example, plots 6 and 13 (seeded grasses only) only saw three grasshoppers and one moth. While plots 7 and 18 (grasses and 2x forbs) saw 5 grasshoppers, 3 butterflies, 3 spiders, 3 bees, 1 stink bug, 1 caterpillar, and 1 bird.
Grasshopper
Evidence
Evidence
We took our data by walking around the outside of each plot and looking carefully for any insects. We counted them by writing what we saw and then tallying how many times we saw it.
Out of the plots we went to, plots 1 and 12 were grasses and forbs. Plots 13 and 6 were seeded grasses only. And plots 7 and 18 were grasses with 2x forbs.
Discussion and next steps
Discussion and next steps
I think a few inaccuracies in our experiment would be that we worked two days on the first three plots and only one day on the last plots. The weather also wasn’t the same one all the days, one day was a lot more wet.
On plots 1, 7, and 13 we analyzed for two days, but on plots 6, 12, and 18 we only analyzed for one day.
New questions we are interested in asking are “How many of a specific animal (ex. grasshoppers) are there in all the grasses and 2x forbs plots?
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