Locals Only: Are Areas with Native Trees More Biologically Diverse than Areas with Non-native Trees?

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of this experiment was to see if a difference in biological diversity on the macroscopic invertebrate level can be observed between an area with mostly native vegetation and an area with mostly non-native vegetation, and if so, which area would be more biologically diverse. My hypothesis was that a difference could be observed and that the native areas would be more biologically diverse. Methods/Materials Over a three week period I collected leaf litter from two native plant areas and two non-native plant areas. I put the leaf litter in a Berlese funnel (see Berlese funnel page and diagram), and identified the specimens that collected below the funnel. Results My results showed the non-native plant areas to be much less biologically diverse in terms of macroscopic invertebrates than the native areas. Conclusions/Discussion My conclusion supported my hypothesis and showed that a difference in biological diversity on the macro level can be observed and that areas with native vegetation have a greater diversity of invertebrates than do areas with non-native vegetation. The native areas had 120% more unique species than the non-native areas.

Competition history

• CSEF 2006 Environmental Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0931

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Environmental Analysis projects
• CSEF Environmental Analysis projects
• Every CSEF 2006 project