biology lab
Assignments
For your ease in completing the following assignments, the background text relevant to the experiment that you will perform is in orange text, instructions for each assignment are indicated by plain text, and questions or activities that you will be asked to provide answers for are indicated by bold text.
Assignment 1: Getting to Know PopEcoLab:Single Species Population Growth
This assignment is designed to help you become familiar with the operation of PopEcoLab by studying the population growth of brown sparrows. The first screen that appears in PopEcoLab shows you an input parameter page with a table listing the default parameters for the laboratory conditions that you can manipulate when setting up your experiments.
Before you can set up any experiment in PopEcoLab, you must be familiar with the input parameters that you can manipulate. You will study the effects of these different parameters in future assignments. A brief description of each input parameter is provided below. Refer back to this section as needed when you are working on different assignments.
Click on the Change Inputs button to see all the parameters you can manipulate for this lab. A new page will open with buttons for each of the input parameters located at the left side of each page (initial population size will be open as the first input parameter). Click on each input parameter and read the descriptions below. Change each parameter so that you can become familiar with how each input parameter operates.
Initial Population— the initial population for brown sparrows is set at 200 birds while the default value for blue sparrows and hawks is zero. Population size of each species can be manipulated by clicking and dragging the slider bar.
Clutch Size—clutch size is the number of eggs that a female bird lays in her nest. The default value for brown sparrows and blue sparrows is three eggs while the default clutch size for hawks is two eggs. Controlling clutch size is
For your ease in completing the following assignments, the background text relevant to the experiment that you will perform is in orange text, instructions for each assignment are indicated by plain text, and questions or activities that you will be asked to provide answers for are indicated by bold text.
Assignment 1: Getting to Know PopEcoLab:Single Species Population Growth
This assignment is designed to help you become familiar with the operation of PopEcoLab by studying the population growth of brown sparrows. The first screen that appears in PopEcoLab shows you an input parameter page with a table listing the default parameters for the laboratory conditions that you can manipulate when setting up your experiments.
Before you can set up any experiment in PopEcoLab, you must be familiar with the input parameters that you can manipulate. You will study the effects of these different parameters in future assignments. A brief description of each input parameter is provided below. Refer back to this section as needed when you are working on different assignments.
Click on the Change Inputs button to see all the parameters you can manipulate for this lab. A new page will open with buttons for each of the input parameters located at the left side of each page (initial population size will be open as the first input parameter). Click on each input parameter and read the descriptions below. Change each parameter so that you can become familiar with how each input parameter operates.
Initial Population— the initial population for brown sparrows is set at 200 birds while the default value for blue sparrows and hawks is zero. Population size of each species can be manipulated by clicking and dragging the slider bar.
Clutch Size—clutch size is the number of eggs that a female bird lays in her nest. The default value for brown sparrows and blue sparrows is three eggs while the default clutch size for hawks is two eggs. Controlling clutch size is