Upper Hutt College
Year 13 Biology
Slater Study

Achievement standard: biology 3.1

Introduction to experiment:
In this investigation of the ecological niche of the woodlouse, I chose to experiment the amount of soil moisture that the slaters tend to prefer. I chose this aspect, as moisture is a vital part in the survival of this small creature.

Internet sources provided information of the woodlice that shows that they are from crustacean descent and formerly aquatic even though now they are terrestrial rather than water dwelling. Slaters are generally found in moist, dark places with decomposing plant matter.

Enter Slater Diagram

From two diagrams it is shown the area of the slaters lungs are near the rear end of the woodlouse …show more content…

To do this, get down to eye level line to ensure the water amount is exact, this is so it is a fair test.

7. Now, collect your 50 slaters and put them into the control section (this is where there has been no water added to the dirt). Start the timer and observe the slaters as they move between each container and take general notes of their behaviour, which can be used in the conclusion.

8. After 10 minutes, stop the timer and count up the slaters in each container and record into a table like this:

0mls 25mls 50mls 100mls
1st test
2nd test
3rd test
4th test
5th test

9. This must be done as soon as possible, as the slaters will continue to move around and possibly crawl into other containers, which will throw out the accuracy of results.

10. Now, after recording results, all the slaters should be collected up again. Place all 50 slaters back into the first container that has no added water and start the timer. Repeat the steps 7, 8 and 9 another five times. This will give a better range of results and will help explain my hypothesis.

11. Record all results using the raw data or averages on maybe three different graphs, I would suggest line graph, bar graph, scatter graph in this case as it would be easy to draw multiple observations from the plotted data.

12. Write conclusion from observations and write discussion on why things happened in