Factors Affecting Invertebrate Communities in Burnt and Unburned Sections of Teide Forest + SPSS

Factors Affecting Invertebrate Communities in Burnt and Unburned Sections of Teide Forest
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Abstract
Forest fires influence the ecosystem of pine forests by reducing the population of organisms. One such forest that has been affected by fire is the Teide national park, which is located in Spain. This paper investigates the factors affecting invertebrates’ communities in burnt and unburnt pine forests by using Teide forest as the population. Statistical tools such as ordination and the T-test are used to make inference about the study population. It is critical that the method used for data collection was systematic random sampling, which divided the study population into various sections. This study concluded that factors that affected the millipede snake species’ population are moisture levels, rock depth, rock length, and leaf litter cover.
Contents
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List of Tables  PAGEREF _Toc382936741 \h
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List of Figures  PAGEREF _Toc382936742 \h
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Introduction  PAGEREF _Toc382936743 \h
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Methods  PAGEREF _Toc382936744 \h
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Results  PAGEREF _Toc382936745 \h
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Results for Millipede T-test  PAGEREF _Toc382936746 \h
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Results for Total species T-test  PAGEREF _Toc382936747 \h
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Results from the Ordination Plot  PAGEREF _Toc382936748 \h
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Results from Clustered Bar Graphs  PAGEREF _Toc382936749 \h
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Discussion  PAGEREF _Toc382936750 \h
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Conclusion  PAGEREF _Toc382936751 \h
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References  PAGEREF _Toc382936752 \h
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List of Tables TOC \h \z \c "Table" 
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Introduction
The subject of the factors affecting invertebrate communities in burnt and unburned pine forests is attracting a lot of attention from scholars in ecology. This is evidenced by publications from authors like Saab and Pacific Northwest Research Station (2007) and Arckle et al., (2010). Fire ensues as a natural disturbance via lightning and plays a major role in promoting changes of ecosystems and modifying landscapes. There have been instances where forest fires have been caused by human beings. For instance, Maleque and Maetq (2009) highlights that humans have a record of changing natural fire regimes by using fire for recreational purposes or using it as a land management tool. Even though prescribed burning could be useful in restoring conservation values, inappropriate fire regimes may result in detrimental consequences for inherent biodiversity. Gjerlov and Richardson (2004) who highlight that ecosystem changes resulting from forest fires affect biological and environmental ecosystems share this opinion.
Perhaps one of the forests that have been adversely affected by forest fires is the Teide national park. Teide national park is located in Tenerife in the Canary Islands of Spain. The national park has an estimated size of 73.32 square miles and was full of beautiful sites and sceneries prior to 2012 (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2014). Pine trees that magnify the scenery of the national park mostly covered the forest. However, on 15 July 2012, a fire that affected the ecosystem of the forest struck. According to News Sky (2012), the fire affected up to 12 square miles of the forest. This was the motivation for conducting an investigation into the factors affecting invertebrates’ communities in burnt and unburned pine forests. This paper investigates the aforementioned objective using statistical tools to analyze the factors that affect invertebrates’ communities in Teide national park. It provides the methods, results, and a discussion for the study using data that was collected from the forest.
Methods
Primary data was used for the study owing to the reality that data was collected from Teide forest. The method used for data collection was systematic random sampling because the forest was first divided into burnt and unburned sections. Each of the two sections was further divided into forest sections that were covered by either trees or shrubs. It is then that rocks were randomly collected from each of the sections. Fifteen rocks from each of the sections were collected examined and cratered for invertebrate families and their abundance. Rock depth (how deep the rock was sitting in the soil) was measured. Some of the data used for the analysis include the size (length, width, and area) of rocks, moisture levels, leaflet cover and conductivity and organisms such as spiders, centipedes, and millipedes. Most of the organisms chosen for the study were less than six. It should be noted that one organism recorded a reasonable number (millipedes). Hence, only millipedes were used to make an inference on the study population.
The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data collected. Specifically, a two sample T-test and an ordination plot were used for analysis. Blake et al., (2003) defines an ordination plot as a graph that geometrically arranges sites so that the distance between the sites represents the ecological distances. The results from ordination are viewed as two-dimensional graphs with each site being represented. Winter (2013) mentions that a two sample T-test is used to compare unknown means and determine whether they are different from each other based on the independent samples from each population. The total numbers of species found in both sites were also compared using both ordination plots and a two sample T-test. Ultimately, hypothesis test were used to determine whether there was a difference between the populations.
H0: The means of the burnt population is not different from the mean of the unburned population
H1: The means of the burnt population is different from the mean of the unburned population
Results
Results for Millipede T-test
The results for the group statistics indicated that the total size of data item collected from both the burnt section and unburned was 30. The mean for the burnt section was 0.17 while the mean for the unburned section was 1.90. The results for this analysis for the additional statistics are indicated in table 1 below.
Group StatisticsBurntNMeanStd. DeviationStd. Error MeanMillipede snakeBurnt30.17.379.069Unburned301.904.866.888Table  SEQ Table \* ARABIC 1
The results from the two-sampled T-test for equal variance assumed had a p value of 0.057 at fifty-eight degrees of freedom while the result for the equal variance not assumed had a p value of 0.061 at 29.35 degrees of freedom. Additional results obtained from the analysis are indicated in table 2 below.