Question

Gorongosa National Park is a protected area in Mozambique. Decades of war, ending in the 1990s, decimated the populations of many of Gorongosa’s large animals, but thanks to a large-scale restoration effort some are now rebounding. Gorongosa’s researchers are working to discover and catalog animal species in Gorongosa in order to track their recovery using remote trail cameras. These photos are posted on a citizen science website called WildCam Gorongosa (www.wildcamgorongosa.org), where the public can identify animals and collect data. This information is available to view or download via the WildCam Lab, an area within WildCam Gorongosa for investigating scientific questions.

To fulfill the restoration goals of Gorongosa, it is important for biologists to collect data on the current status of biodiversity in the park. Biodiversity can be defined simply as the variety of life, but biodiversity can be studied at many levels, including genetic diversity, species diversity, and ecosystem diversity. High biodiversity is an indicator of ecological resilience, or the ability of an ecosystem to resist change or recover from disturbances. E.O. Wilson has championed the importance of assessing biodiversity and supports the work of conservation scientists like those working in Gorongosa National Park. The high biodiversity of organisms found in Gorongosa is due, in part, to the different vegetation types, which characterize habitats, including grassland, limestone gorges, savanna/woodland, and woodland. Because biodiversity cannot easily be captured in a single number, there are various indices, or measurements, that when examined together provide a more comprehensive picture of biodiversity.

Humans are a part of the ecosystem in Gorongosa: tourists travel in vehicles on the park roads while viewing wildlife, park rangers protect wildlife by patrolling the area, and local people live in villages and on farms surrounding the park. Humans’ impact on wildlife may be positive, negative, or both. Rather than looking at impacts on individual species, scientists may choose to investigate how humans impact species diversity, which will provide information on all of the species in the community.

Species diversity is the variety of species in an ecological community and cannot be determined by a single direct measurement. Species diversity is represented by an index, or a formula, that takes into account both the number of species present and how even the abundances are among species. In this activity you will use trail camera data to compare the species diversity at different distances from humans using the Shannon-Wiener diversity index.

PROCEDURES AND QUESTIONS

Part 1: Planning Data Collection

In this activity, you will use data from WildCam Gorongosa to answer the following research question:

“Does the species diversity of the animals captured by a trail camera decrease when the camera is placed closer to locations where people are present?”

Before attempting to answer this question, let’s first determine which data will be needed. (4 pts)

1. Identify the independent variable(s) in the research question. Justify your selection.

2. Identify the dependent variable(s) in the research question. Justify your selection.

3. Based on your answers above, what types of data do we need from the trail cameras?

4. What is your hypothesis for this study?

Answer 1

1) independent variable in the research is limestone gorge as it will change on its own.

2) dependent variable is vegetation, animals which can Change on the basis of others like vegetation can suffer from overgrazing etc

3) trail cameras are fitted in remote areas. Where we can not go directly due to adverse conditions. Trail cameras can tell us about species presence, abundance, habitat preferred by species, food habits, behaviour of animal etc.

4) hypothesis is a predictive outcome on the basis of research study.

hypothesis for this research according to my opinion is that huge data will be generated from remote areas. On which biologists can work and identify new species present there and classifying them. As this data is also presented on the websites opened for public . General awareness in public about this park will be created. It will help tourists when they will visit the park.