Ecology Lab 2 scientific method of birds

In today’s lab we learned about the scientific method and a hypothesis. We talked about how ecologists have an issue when experimenting because they cannot control some environmental factors. Therefore the probability of repeatability in an ecological experiment in often minimal. We then went into talking about the importance of an experimenter’s hypothesis. We summed up a hypothesis as just being an assumption that could be put to the test. After we talked about some examples of a hypothesis we went into talking about the different types of research. For my two experiments in today’s lab I used natural experiments. A natural experiment is one of the most relevant types of experiments an ecologist can use because it occurs in a natural setting and is not repeatable. In today’s lab I am hoping to make a hypothesis that I could provide a lot of testable data and variables.
For the first part of a lab we were told to select a partner and draw an ecological topic to make a hypothesis on. Ben and I selected animal and plant association. For the other part of toady’s lab we were told to choose our own ecological topic and develop a hypothesis. Animals frequently visit certain plants that the insects they eat are around. Blue birds hang around my garden because they like to eat the beetles that are around the tomato plants.
For plant and animal association my partner and I came up with a hypothesis that bees are around flowers more than tress. Ben and I thought we could test this hypothesis by looking at samples around campus. Random sampling might be the best sampling technique to use because it would give us a larger scale of data. We noticed the flowerbed outside of New Science Hall had tons of bees while the oak trees toward the center of campus had few if any. This experiment would obviously only be feasible in the warm