Los Angeles Pierce College Diversity Between Two Different Lawn Communities Worksheet

This assignment is to compare species diversity between two different lawn communities.

Read pages 151-152 (at the end of chapter 5) to refresh yourself on the Lawn Census activity, and Read pages 197-198 (at the end of chapter 7) to learn about dominance-diversity curves and the Shannon Index. 

Here is the excel sheet with our data: Lawn Census Data .xlsx

(please let me know asap if you can open the link or not)

In Excel, draw dominance-diversity curves with species of non-grass along the X-axis and ln(p) along the Y-axis. In other words, make a line graph with natural log (ln) proportion of cover on the vertical axis and the species ordered by abundance on the horizontal axis.  Label the y-axis as the ln proportion of non-grass cover and x-axis as non-grass species. You should have two lines, one for each lawn, on one graph. 

Make a caption for the graph that adds context and include how many different species were on each lawn. Add the Shannon index value in a text box above each line on the graph. 

Delete gridlines, but you can keep the legend that says which site is which. Change the colors if you want. 

Please answer the following questions in a text box in your excel file below your graph (be careful, text boxes in excel don’t have spell check): 

Hypothesize which lawn will have greatest species diversity between the disturbed and undisturbed lawn communities. 

Compare the lines for the two lawns. Were the patterns similar or different in the two lawns? How so?

Did the two lawns have similar or different species richness’s? Give the species richness of each lawn. (Species richness = # of different species represented; simply a count of species) 

Would this be a great measure of biodiversity if you had not gathered the same number of data points for both lawns?

Compare the two lawns’ Shannon index values. Which lawn has more diversity of broad-leafed (non-grass) plants? (The higher the Shannon index value, the higher the species richness and evenness.

Please upload your calculations, graph, caption, and question answers as an excel file.

here is the link to the book! please let me know asap if you can open it so I can send it. thank you so much 

106LSpr21 .ibooks