Biophysical Ecology and Pattern Recognition
Abstract:
This study was undertaken to investigate behavioral adaptations of a lizard, Lacertilia, to its environment. Twelve peeps, representing the lizards, were placed in a habitat with two microhabitats of different temperatures. Six peeps were placed in one microhabitat, and six in the other. The internal temperature of these “lizards” was measured over a period of 20 minutes to see if their body temperatures matched that of their environment and to make inferences about the behavioral adaptations the organism might acquire to maintain its body temperature. One microhabitat was on a tree and under the branches; the other was at the base of the tree. We hypothesized that the microhabitat in …show more content…

This was repeated for the next 5 replicates (3 more lines). This graph showed us which habitat was warmer or cooler, and which data is more reliable. An ANOVA test was run on our final data points at our last point in recorded time. This was done by setting up the data points for the last minute in columns with labels of which microhabitat they came from (“Tree” and “Ground”). Data Analysis was used to run the ANOVA, which gave us a p-value and allowed us to interpret the results to see that they were significant.
Results:
On average, the internal temperatures of the lizards on the ground were always higher throughout the twenty minutes than the lizards on the tree (Figure 1). Temperatures of organisms in both microhabitats initially increased and then reached a plateau, which is significant to the behavior of the organism as time passes. The data from lizards on the tree are not as reliable, because they have a very wide confidence interval. The ANOVA test produced a p value of 0.0010159, which indicates that there is a significant difference between the two microhabitats. Figure 1. Change in temperature of Lacertilia over time on September 12, 2012. Each solid line represents the average of six organisms in each microhabitat. The dotted lines represent the confidence levels of the data for their corresponding microhabitat.

Table 4. Summary table of the raw data. P-value