BIOL 1209
Writing Assignment 2
Cover Sheet

I certify that the writing in this assignment is my individual work and is my sole intellectual property. It does not contain the ideas, or writing of other individuals/authors.

Author: Mark Cooper Jr. Date: 10/24/12

Lab Instructor: Katherine Hovanes Lab Section # 12

Population Ecology Experiment
Background:
Phosphate is an abiotic factor; therefore, it is a nonliving factor that affects living organism. In this experiment we prose to test the whether variation in environmental phosphate levels affects autotrophic organisms. We ran a lake and Chlamydomonas experiment in order to determine a solution for this question. In our lake experiment we took samples of water
The levels of phosphate were graphed in response to its chlorophyll absorbance; in other words, the data represents the chlorophyll absorbance/algae level in each water sample in response to their phosphate levels.
Trend: There is not a trend in the data.
Discussion:
Chamyl Conclusion:
In these experiments, we fail to reject the null and accept the alternative hypothesis. Phosphate levels do influence the population growth rate of Chlamydomonas in a laboratory setting. Phosphate, an abiotic factor, is a nonliving factor that affects living organisms. Phosphate is a source of nutrients for the Chlamydomonas. Therefore when the phosphate was added to the population Chlamydomonas it caused the growth rate to increase with each treatment. In our results the high-phosphorus treatment had the lowest growth rate because it contained a high amount of Chlamydomonas to begin the experiment. Therefore this treatment did not have much room to grow. The control treatment had the second highest growth rate because it contained more Chlamydomonas then the no-phosphorus but less Chlamydomonas than the high-phosphorus treatment. The no-phosphorus treatment had the highest growth rate because he had the least amount of Chlamydomonas to begin with having the highest potential for growth.
Lake Conclusion:
In this experiment, there were no significance trend chlorophyll absorbance/algae levels as a function in