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Ecology Lab Report Ecology is the study of relationships between organisms and their environment which includes both physical and biological factors. Humans have a major influence on ecosystems and this is very important in the waterways of California. The American River has been influenced greatly by humans by mining for gold, pollution through humans themselves, and an immense amount of other things (Becker 1992). We tested the growth of bacteria in the water of the American River and used fertilizer as a treatment to find out if it would make an impact.
The high treatment of earthlier will have more significant of a change in bacterial growth than the control and low treatment. As a class we took a long and winding Journey down to the American River where we took samples of the water. Each group then put this water into three separate Jars. Euglena is a genus of unicellular flagellate protests. It is the best known and most widely studied member of the phylum Euglena (Race 2010). We then put Euglena inside of each of the three Jars. This species can be used to study cell growth and metabolism in various environmental conditions (Euglena 013).
Groups then chose a treatment for the bacteria ridden water; we chose fertilizer as our treatment group. A control Jar, low treatment Jar, and high treatment jar were then all chosen. The control Jar contained no treatment, the low treatment jar contained little amount of treatment, and the high treatment contained a higher amount of fertilizer. Studies show that pond fertilization is microbiological more dynamic in the earlier phases Can 2001). Due to the fact that this lab is only a three week process we saw all of the earlier phases of the fertilization working.
Once a week during our lab class for three weeks, we would take a sample of each Jar and measure the Euglena contained within the water. From these samples we would get the number of Euglena, Rotifer’s, other Authors, and also other Heterodox that were present. We would then record the results into our lab manuals and enter them into excel. We compared the bacterial growth in all three Jars in order to find out our hypothesis. Figure 1 Euglena was the most important data group out of all the data that was collected in these three weeks.
As showed in figure one and two, the control group had an increase in Euglena count from week two to week three, the high and low treatment group both had a small decrease in Euglena count. This shows that fertilizer will have an effect on the environment no matter the amount. Therefore our hypothesis was supported and the high treatment of fertilizer did have a more significant change in bacteria then both the control and the low treatments. Due to the fact the high treatment had a higher dosage of fertilization it decreased the Euglena count ore than the low and control treatments did.