IB Biology HL -- biodiversity lab ideas?

[destroyedparadise]

Hi everybody! For our IB Bio HL Year 2 class we have to design a lab involving biodiversity for practice for the actual internal assessments. Since this is not an actual IB exam, it wouldn't be academic dishonesty asking for some ideas.

Me and my partner are currently considering doing a lab about the pH level of the soil in different areas and its effect on plant and animal life. However, a very similar lab has already been done.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[JoeG]

I did a very similar lab on biodiversity for my Group IV project. Me and my entire IB class was assigned to do a project on biodiversity, and we collected large amounts of data about areas in a river in our city. Variables collected included water pH, temperature, seagrass coverage (measured by using a transect), wind, wave height, etc. Then we used large nets to collect sea life in our areas, and identified the species of each animal before releasing them into the wild. After this, we measured the biodiversity of the river, and every team was required to send their data to a massive data pool. We calculated biodiversity as our dependent variable, and then retroactively chose our dependent variable.

I'm not advising that you do the exact same experiment I did (Plagiarism lol) but you can do something similar.

Also, you can always try to do something with the amount of Pollutant/Chemical X in an ecosystem, and then measure it's affect on the biodiversity of Plant life in an ecosystem.

With biodiversity, the labs are always going to be quite similar, as it's always going to affect plant and animal life, (unless you decide to focus on the microscopic) so just try to choose an independent variable that is able to be measured.

P.S. Wildlife Field Guides are a great help when identifying species in the wild. They shouldn't be that expensive, and your local library/school might have a few.

[thinkerlearner]

I kinda have a similar problem to DestroyedParadise. I'm doing an IB Bio HL planning lab. No pointers given by the teacher. She said think up a question, and try making an experiment. One hint she did give us that surveys are an acceptable form of experiments, so I was thinking I could do somethin' on... common genetic traits, like... rolling of your tongue, double-jointedness, or something of that kind... Any idea?