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Fig. 3 Legend: When analyzing the evenness, for condition 1 the average was 0.987. The standard deviation was 0.0045. For the richness the average was 29.14 and the standard deviation was 1.68. The for the Shannon Diversity the average was 3.33 and the standard Deviation was 0.069. For condition 2 the average for the evenness was 0.98 and the standard deviation was 0.011. For the Shannon Diversity the average was 3.30 and the standard deviation was 0.011. For the richness the average was 29.13 and the standard deviation was 1.35.
After calculating the average and the standard deviation we then calculated our p-value. The result for that was that the richness’s p-value was 1. The Shannon Diversity’s p-value was 0.23. Lastly the evenness p-value was 0.51. Looking at these numbers we can determine that the number of bacteria in the soil samples are even. With this data we can infer that there is a little bit more diversity in condition 1 than there is in condition 2. Then we can look at the p-values to see if there is any significant difference between the two conditions. For the richness of the two conditions the p-value was 1. For the p-value of the evenness it was 0.23, and finally for the Shannon diversity p-value it was 0.51. Looking at these numbers they are all greater than 0.05 meaning that there is no significant difference between the two conditions in all the 3 tests.
Method: To find the Shannon Diversity, the evenness, and the richness we had to pipet a solution that had our two soil conditions in it into an EcoPlate. We inserted it into a plate reader do give us data about the biodiversity in our soil. Then we inserted the numbers we received from the read into an excel spreadsheet that calculated the Shannon diversity, the evenness, and the richness of the soil. When receiving the numbers for our class we found the average number, standard deviation, and our p-values from our 3 analyses.
Evidence: When analyzing and comparing the two conditions, there were not a lot of differences between the numbers. Although the numbers did not differ much, we can still look at the data and figure out what these small differences mean. For example, when looking at the evenness of condition 1 and condition two, condition 1’s evenness is a little bit higher than 2’s. This means that there is more evenness in how soil microbes used carbon sources in the soil. With this data we can look at our Shannon Diversity results and concluded that because condition 1’s number is slightly higher it means that there is slightly more diversity in condition 1 than there is in condition 2. Finally, we can look at the p-values from the 3 analysis that we performed. All of the p-values are greater than 0.05. From this we can determine that there is no significant difference between our two conditions. It can be concluded that there is no unique soil microbiome in either of the two conditions.
Conclusion: We can determine this by looking at our p-values which are all greater the 0.05. Based on the results we can confidently determine that there is no statistically significant difference between the two conditions. Although there is no significant difference between the two conditions, the small differences between the results might have to do with the location of where the soil was collected. For example, for condition 1 it was more in the garden area where there was more of a variety of plants and grass around it. While for condition 2 was collected more towards the edge of the garden where there weren’t as many plants and there were more rocks and bricks. With this information we can infer that it’s harder for biodiversity to thrive where there aren’t as many nutrients. This is one reason to why there is just slightly more diversity in condition 1.
Explanation: Another thing that might have an effect on the biodiversity of the gardens soil could be that there used to be a building where the garden stands now. When constructing a building the first layer of soil is often removed to level out the terrain (Devigne et al., 2016). When removing the first layer of soil you are removing the biodiversity and nutrients from the area. This could have an overall effect on the biodiversity of the garden. Also going back to the fact that on the conditions 2 side of the garden it seemed that part of the buildings bricks and rock remnants were still there, which could still be affecting the gardens biodiversity.
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