Case Study: "The Life Around Us"

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Biology, Other
Year 4
Case Study "The Life Around Us"
Identify two different types of organisms that you have seen interacting, such as bees and flowers. Now form a simple hypothesis about this interaction. Use the scientific method and your imagination to design an experiment that tests this hypothesis. Be sure to identify variables and a control for them.
Hi,
I can provide you with some examples that you can follow for your own experiment. It is important, though, for you to do your own experiment as well:
Example 1:
Three kinds of pollinators, birds, butterflies, and bees, are foraging in a field in which many species of flowers differ in color and abundance. You wish to know whether birds tend to fly longer distances than bees between visits to flowers.

a. Null H: Birds and bees travel equal distances between flower visits.
Test H: Birds fly longer distances than bees between visits to flowers.

b. Set up an experiment and follow a certain number of bees and a certain number of birds as they fly between flowers. Mark the plants, so that you can later go back and measure the distances between them. To avoid overriding effects of certain individuals, use averages per individual for 20 to 30 individuals of each species as your basic data. Also, block randomize through time, so that you first randomly decide to follow either a single bee or a single bird. Then follow one of the other species. Repeat as necessary.

c. It is an observational study. You cannot control for other factors, such as a preference of bees and butterflies for different types of flowers.

d. The test statistic will be a t-test. Actually, to be pickier than necessary, you ...