After receiving feedback on my second small submission, I’ve decided to refine my hypothesis a little bit. Dr. Elliot pointed out a really big confound in my study — since I already observed that there were more yellow than pink flowers in general, it would only be sensible to assume that pollinators would visit yellow flowers more based on basic principles of probability alone.
In order to get rid of this confound moving forward, I think I am going to switch my hypothesis: Certain flowering species with the same colour flowers attract pollinators more than others. Hopefully this helps me control for this difference in abundance by not observing the pink flowers at all.
I went out and collected data today since it was pretty sunny out and the wind wasn’t bad. I am still following my previous experimental design and methodology, but since I changed my hypothesis, my sample units and replicates have changed.
I am going to look at 6 replicates of each of the 3 yellow flowered species (sample units: 6 of Solidago canadensin, 6 of Helianthus pauciflorus, and 6 of Heliopsis helianthoides). The garden unfortunately does not have 10 of each species for me to adhere to the rule of ten. Six was the greatest number they had of Helianthus pauciflorus, so that was my limiting species.
I still spent 5 minutes at each plant and continued to record the number of pollinator visits I observed. I am feeling much more confident and clear about what I will be observing/expecting after making this switch knowing I’ve controlled for the previous confound as best as I could.
Hello Amira
thanks for the clarification on the 6 vs 10
you can talk about this in Discussion aka future improvements
pollinator visits can difficult to count because it requires much concentration!
interesting!