Bodega Harbor Lab Report
Introduction: The objective of this lab was to understand the community structure and composition of fouling communities in the Bodega harbor. Furthermore, we wanted to understand how physical factors affected the distribution of species richness and species evenness in these fouling communities. I predicted that there would be more percent coverage for the East sides and West sides of docks would be significantly different due to the difference in community diversity.
Methods:
Sampling for the fouling community was taken at Bodega harbor during low tide. The main dock constituted as the transect for which measurements were taken. Quadrats were placed along the main dock, quadrats used in this experiment were .3m x .3m. In total there …show more content…
Figure 1, show the difference in mean percent coverage at each location of the dock. Average, percent coverage was significantly higher for the East side of the dock, our T-value (t=.032056) shows us that there was a significant difference in percent coverage. Eastern side communities also tended to have more vertical growth and overtopping when compared to their western counterparts. Furthermore, softer body organisms appeared more on eastern communities. We also look at species richness between the two types of communities to see if there was any correlation. Figure 2, shows the distribution of species along each quadrat. Are T-test (t= .06616) shows that there is no significant difference. These findings should be interpreted with caution. Due to the way species richness was measured in our experiment, it may not accurately representation how abundant the variation of species on the East side were compared to the western communities. Future measurements at this site with stricter classification methods may prove what we were able to observe while in the field. We concluded the reason for the drastic difference of community composition on both sides of the dock was due to differences in UV exposure. This conclusion was made due to the fact that other abiotic factors wouldn’t be able to influence such drastic changes due to their close proximity. These fouling
Methods:
Sampling for the fouling community was taken at Bodega harbor during low tide. The main dock constituted as the transect for which measurements were taken. Quadrats were placed along the main dock, quadrats used in this experiment were .3m x .3m. In total there …show more content…
Figure 1, show the difference in mean percent coverage at each location of the dock. Average, percent coverage was significantly higher for the East side of the dock, our T-value (t=.032056) shows us that there was a significant difference in percent coverage. Eastern side communities also tended to have more vertical growth and overtopping when compared to their western counterparts. Furthermore, softer body organisms appeared more on eastern communities. We also look at species richness between the two types of communities to see if there was any correlation. Figure 2, shows the distribution of species along each quadrat. Are T-test (t= .06616) shows that there is no significant difference. These findings should be interpreted with caution. Due to the way species richness was measured in our experiment, it may not accurately representation how abundant the variation of species on the East side were compared to the western communities. Future measurements at this site with stricter classification methods may prove what we were able to observe while in the field. We concluded the reason for the drastic difference of community composition on both sides of the dock was due to differences in UV exposure. This conclusion was made due to the fact that other abiotic factors wouldn’t be able to influence such drastic changes due to their close proximity. These fouling