PRACTICAL Name:

44 Ecology – studying populations

You need:
■ 25 cm quadrats ■ notebooks
■ graph paper ■ identification books
■ enamel paint (plant and animal) A simple quadrat

■ paint solvent ■ white pie dishes Plastic tubing

■ fine paint brush ■ specimen tubes

25 cm
Random sampling of plant life
How would you answer the question, ‘Which types
Strong wire
of plant are most common in this habitat?’
You could count all the different types of plant
but this is not necessary except for very small Histogram 1:
habitats. An easier method is called random lightly trampled region

sampling. To do this you use a square or 250

rectangular frame called a quadrat to study 225

200
several small areas (samples) of the habitat
175

Number of plants
chosen at random.
150
You place a quadrat at random throughout a habitat by throwing 125
one over your shoulder. Take care! Do not deliberately throw it 100
to land on vegetation which looks interesting. What you do next 75
depends on the information you require. This could be the density, 50
frequency or percentage cover of various types of plant. 25
0
1 Density This is the number of plants (or animals) in a unit E F G H I
area of habitat (e.g. the number per 25 centimetre square). To Species

discover the density of a plant species in a habitat, you count Histogram 2:

the number of this species present inside the area of a quadrat heavily trampled region
each time it lands. Continue until the quadrat has been cast 225
throughout the whole habitat, then calculate the average number 200
of times the species was found. 175
Number of plants

150
2 Frequency This is the number of times that a particular
125
species is found when a quadrat is thrown a certain number of
100
times. To calculate frequency you count the number of different
75
species within the quadrat each time it lands and note their
50
names. If, for example, you throw it a hundred times, you note 25
the number of times each species was found and express each 0
E F G H I
result out of a hundred. This will tell you the most common
Species
(most frequent) species in the habitat, then the next most
common, down to the rarest.

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