Joshua Tan
Biodiversity in Leaf Litter

Introduction:
Biodiversity
Species diversity is a characteristic that is unique to a community level of biological organization. The biodiversity in different communities has been severely affected by human activities. A community has high species diversity if it has a lot of species present in roughly equally abundant numbers. If it is composed of only a few species or if only a few species are abundant, then the biodiversity is considered to be low. If a community had 100 individuals distributed among 10 species then the maximum possible diversity would occur if there were 10 individuals in each of the 10 species. The minimum possible diversity would occur if there were 91 individuals belonging to 1 …show more content…
That is, the bigger the value of D, the lower the diversity. Sometimes D is subtracted from 1
Simpsons Index of Diversity 1-D
The value of this index also ranges between 0 and 1. However, the greater the value, the greater the sample diversity. In this case, the index represents the probability that two individuals randomly selected from a sample will belong to different species. Also you can also take the reciprocal of the index

Simpsons Reciprocal Index 1/D
The value of this index starts with 1 as the lowest possible figure. This number would represent a community with only 1 species. The higher the value, the greater the diversity. The maximum value is the number of species in the sample. For example if there are five species in the sample, then the maximum value is 5.

Tai Tam Park and …show more content…
Observations:
The area we were in was in a shady forest, further away from the disturbance of humans. The trees protected the ground from sunlight, and there were also some small shrubs too. That provided some shelter more the animals that lived there. The favorable conditions away from the sun allowed a diverse range of species to live there, as shown by the species we collected. Our diversity number was quite high, and that would make sense as the area we collected our data from wasn’t as tainted by humans.
Analysis:
How is the funnel able to separate the organisms from the leaf litter?
The funnel uses light to drive the organisms deeper into the leaf litter, which is held in place by the wire. When they reach the bottom of the litter, they fall through the gaps in the wire and into the alcohol at the bottom What does this indicate about the living conditions which these various organisms prefer?
It indicates that the living conditions that these organisms prefer is one that is away from light, and is cool, dark and