Monday, June 18, 2012

Predation Experiment


This story begins, as any other would, with a group full of people with an unsure question and a perplexed sense of self and purpose. The details get a little hairy from here, so I think it best to pretend they don’t exist and get on to the juicy bits, and by juicy bits I mean the scrumptious nature of a predator/ prey relationship. On the other hand, I’m not actually sure if it would be considered juicy or maybe even crunchy…however I imagine the happy medium would lie somewhere around the consistency of a Tootie Pop. At any rate these are just senseless inquires best made at the perspective of a predator and how it might view its tasty little morsels. On second thought, perhaps it’s best we skip over the juicy bits as well.
Working hard (or hardly working) at collecting samples from Augusta Creek
It’s time to set the scene! The world as we know it is over and you’re wondering a desolate wasteland ruled by sand-people and an omnipotent fern with a sassy, take-no-crap-from-nobody attitude. Suddenly fern is screaming at you to wake up and quickly takes the form of Al Manner (yes, this character in question is me!). Excluding more details, you are now hell-bound for ecology class feeling tremendous enthusiasm for the path your experiment has finally found itself on. This enthusiasm is, of course, well deserved, having successfully scaled the tumultuous battle to near self-discovery in order to reach the state your experiment is currently at (details not discussed). However, for clarity sake, I feel it necessary to bring up one of our “non-existent” details and say that the present state at which you find yourself is partly inspired by the faintest glimpse into the infinitely interconnected network of ecology. Simply put ecology plans to explain the relationships of living things (henceforth referred to as organisms) and said creatures’ physical living situation (otherwise called their environment).
Casting off to collect mosquito larva from pitcher plants!
The importance of elaborating on this detail is that it introduces the topic from which our experiment had spawned from and provides you with a neat sense of context. I could expand upon this idea by providing a few “all too real” examples; however I feel that although I have been granted unlimited artistic freedom, many creations of this sort tend to be happiest when people are around to experience it…so as not to lose you, let’s chuff on! But first an alliteration: please permit me to provide prompt protraction of the proposed purpose of my particular procedural process. Perhaps this pathway of piled prose pushes the perceived towards a perturbed sense of purpose or practical prevalence of this persistent prattle, however for the principle of pure pretend pursuit, I pressure your placation.


This is a damselfly...we used some of their larva for the experiment... better to ask forgiveness than permission?

So the production seen above, has been a little exhausting, not only to write but probably to read as well. I started this a week ago and just haven't been able to muster the energy to finish in a way that might actually reach the point of this bog post. Due to this, I will shift styles and just write about my groups predation experiment in a bit more of a direct fashion. The original idea behind our experiment was to first collect a bunch or prey and a few predators and place them in the same environment. Over time we would chart the differences in the prey population as a result of different predators. We believed that due to feeding differences between damselfly larva and mosquito larva, we would be able to see feeding preferences of the two predators due to variance in population size of the difference species of prey. Overall we thought that because mosquito larva could only eat food that it could fit in it's mouth, there would be a larger population of larger prey species in the same environment as the mosquito larva when compared to damselfly larva and the control. For many reasons, including the difficulty in charting population size of many different prey species, as well as a general lack of attentiveness to the project (we forgot about it),  this experiment was a bit of a flop. Our next plan was much more simple and straightforward. 
The experiment that we decided to conduct also involved the predator prey relationship, but this time we focused more on prey population and how it responded to different predators. We tested three different groups, one with just prey, one with mosquito larva and prey, and the last with stonefly larva and prey. Over a week long period we counted prey population every day and found a few interesting results. The sample that had no predators in it, also had a large population which resulted in a dramatic population crash and an overall smaller final population than all other samples. Another interesting result was how the population that with the mosquito larva and the the stonefly larva differed, in that the population with mosquito larva also experienced a population crash, but also quickly recovered only to crash again. This stood in contrast to the stonefly sample in which the population experienced neither a dramatic crash or a dramatic growth but a slow and controlled growth. These results are fascinating because they point to the conclusion that ecosystems depend not only on predators to control various populations, but also that the correct balance of predators are vital in presenting a stable environment for these populations to coexist. 


No comments:

Post a Comment