The year is 2015. The setting: Lake Rotoiti, New Zealand. A group of 4 intrepid explorers are tasked with an important… task. Doing science. And if they weren’t sure what kind of science they wanted to do yet, they at least knew that they wanted their study to involve plants. And bugs, too. And so was born the Veggie-Mites.
After hours of research and deliberation, they decided on their course of action. You see, part of the shore around Lake Rotoiti is designated as a nature preserve. The remaining part of the shore is only conserved by volunteer efforts, and lacks formal protection under New Zealand law. This group of students chose to do an ecological comparison between the preserve and the non-preserve areas. Their methodology consisted of three major parts: an assessment of plant community health via diversity values, an assessment of invertebrate community health using diversity values as well as bioindicator species (if data gathered permitted that particular factor), and soil pH levels as a further data point to tie it all together. All of this information would be collected
on 20 sites, ten on each side of the lake, which were to be reached using a random selection method consisting of rolling a die to determine the amount of steps a specific person would take into the woods.
Once their plan was laid, they set out to collect their data but quickly realized that perhaps their plan was too ambitious to complete in only 72 hours. Not allowing themselves to be deterred, they spent the first 48 hours collecting plant data by day and sorting invertebrates from the collected soil by night. The plant information was collected by using a quadrat assembled from bamboo and twine, dividing their 1m2 plots into more easily managed 5cm2 sections, and then assessing the percent cover of the different species found in each plot. The invertebrate information was collected by hand sorting out the bugs present into vials of ethanol on a time limit, and then later identifying
They worked until the last minute attempting to quantify the plethora of data collected throughout the three days, but their efforts that day were cut short by the harsh demands of a presentation… our journey will resume on another day. Let the statistical analyses begin…