Wildlife - Kick, Quadrats, and Transect Line Sampling

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Different Types of Conservation Species

  • Flagstone species: species that are chosen due to their appeal to the public and their ability to raise money.
  • Keystone species: species that the ecosystem is reliant on, the ecosystem tends to revolve around them.
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Why do we survey?

  • Estimate the number of organisms in a population to better understand the relationships of a community.
  • Monitor the impact of conservation projects that aim to conserve endangered species or habitats.
    • endangered species come in all shapes and sizes
    • mostly amphibians in the UK
  • it is almost always impossible to count all the organisms in a population, so we look at a small population to draw conclusion about the rest of the population.
  • when sampling a population the numbers of organisms are counted within a small site and  the results are multiplied up to the larger area
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Kick Sampling

  • Catch aquatic organisms, nets are often held downstream of an area of river bed which is then gently disturbed by the person doing the sampling. The small animals gloat into the net. This is called kick-sampling.
  • Handler kicks a certain area for 30 seconds at 3 separate intervals to allow the handler to gain possible inverts within a specific time.
  • Method is cost effective and doesn't present any ethical implications towards the inverts present.
  • Can determine the quality of the water dependent upon the abundance of indicator species, e.g., black fly larvae mayfly larvae
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Transect Lines

  • We can use transect lines for a large amount of the animals we have looked at.
  • Transects: a line across a habitat or part of a habitat. It can be as simple as a string or rope placed in a line on the ground. The number of organisms of each species along a transect. Can be observed and recorded at regular intervals.
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Systematic Sampling

  • an example of this would be to investigate sea weed distribution up a beach
  • a quadrat can be placed at regular distances, for example, every 5 metres, along an imaginary line (transect), which would run up the beach.
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