Lab 1 - Aquatic Invertebrates

1806 Words8 Pages
Aquatic Invertebrates: Adaptations and Feeding Guilds INTRODUCTION Global warming and human's authoritative influence on the environment such as deforestation, pollution etc. are taking a bad toll on the diversity of the ecosystem. Global warming which has brought about increase in the temperatures is disturbing the natural cycle of the ecosystem. This has brought upon an increased droughts throughout the world. The droughts and increased heat has had negative impacts on local aquatic invertebrates. Aquatic invertebrates are adapted to survive in a particular range of temperature and habitat. But global warming makes it harder to survive. This could lead to the extinction of several species of aquatic invertebrates which in turn would lead to serious consequences of the ecosystem. Many of the aquatic invertebrates are responsible for keeping the ecosystem clean by feeding on litters. Extinction of theses invertebrates would totally disrupt the balance of the ecosystem. The aim of this study is to bring awareness about the harmful impact global warming has on the local aquatic invertebrates and on the ecosystem at a global scale. The hypothesis for this study is that the biotic diversity of the slow moving water and fast moving water are driven by abiotic factors. To support this hypothesis, three predictions were made. The first prediction is that the slow moving water and fast moving water would have different species due to the differences in the abiotic factors in the two habitats. The second prediction is that the habitat specialization is a significant mechanism contributing to the assemblage structure and the last prediction that different feeding guilds is an indication of differences in the major sources of energy available in the two habitats. The purpose of this study was to test each of these three predictions to

More about Lab 1 - Aquatic Invertebrates

Open Document