By: Samantha Cooney and Joshua McKain

Phosphate Levels and Macro Invertebrate

Diversity

Water quality differences are known to affect macro invertebrate diversity

Phosphate levels are known to spike in Fernan Lake

Could disequilibrium between phosphorus and nitrogen in the lake affect macro invertebrate diversity in lake outlet?

Justification

Initial QuestionDo high phosphate concentrations affect macro

invertebrate biodiversity in riffles?

HypothesisIf phosphate levels are high, macro

invertebrate biodiversity will be low.

Introduction

Disturb a .5 square meter area riffle with shovel

Collect macro inverts with a kick netOrganize inverts based on high quality,

medium quality, and low quality speciesCollect pH, DO, water temp., air temp, and

phosphorous concentration at invert collection sites

Draw correlations using Anova

Methods

ShovelKick net4 sample tubesLab quest Probes: DO, pH, tempBug viewerHach kitForcepsDichotomous keys

Materials

Site 1 and 2

Site 4 and 5

Site 3

Site 1

Site 2

Site 3

Site 4

Site 5

Location Air Temp (°C) Water Temp (°C) DO (mg/L) "Phosphorus" pH

1 18 15 8.92 2 7.8

2 14 14.2 9.33 2 7.6

3 20 8.5 7.9 3 7.8

4 19 10.4 7.7 2 7.7

5 20 9.3 9.5 0 7.5

AVERAGE 18.2 11.48 8.67 1.8 7.68

variance 6.2 8.647 0.6802 1.2 0.017

sd 2.48998 2.940578 0.824742 1.095445 0.130384

Results

LocationHigh Quality

Species # SpeciesModerate Quality

Species # SpeciesLow Quality

Species # Species

1 2 2 5 4 1 1

2 0 0 5 3 3 4

3 1 1 3 2 3 3

4 1 2 0 0 1 2

5 5 7 1 1 3 3

Results

Site 4 had low diversity and pop. density because there was no water flowing the day before we collected our samples.

Anova: Single Factor

SUMMARYGroups Count Sum Average Variance

phosphor 5 9 1.8 1.2high quality species 5 12 2.4 7.3

ANOVASource

of Variation SS df MS F P-value F critBetween Groups 0.9 1 0.9

0.211765

0.657637

5.317655

Within Groups 34 8 4.25

Total 34.9 9

Analysis of the Variance to find if the means are correlated(Ho: µ1=µ2) (Ha: µ1≠µ2). • f* is not in the critical region, there for we

accept (Ho: µ1=µ2) and reject the null hypothesis (Ha) that the means are not related.

• P-value 0.657637> 0.05 therefore we accept Ho

Mirror Adventure LearningPlace-based learning and field trips

More time collecting data on invertsLessons on dichotomous keys

Blogging AL vs. DL

Application in the classroom

Data supported hypothesisPhosphate concentrations seem to have an

affect on macro invertebrate diversityDifference of means are related

Too little data may have skewed resultsMore time in data collectionMore time identifying individual speciesConfusion with units for phosphate

Conclusion