II. Short answer questions
11. Mr. Anderson is studying the community structure of ants living in the main campus of National Taiwan
University (NTU) as his master's thesis. He randomly selected 10 plots, cach 10 m by 10 m. He visited each
plot five times in July-August 2020. During cach visit, he randomly selected an 80 cm by 80 cm quadrat, spent
30 min at the quadrat, and collected all of the ant individuals that showed up on the soil, litter or plant surfaces
within the quadrat. He preserved the individuals in 95% cthanol, and identified cach individual to the species
level in the lab. He then used the data to estimate the density of each ant species on campus, calculated o-
diversity, and estimated the relative abundance of each species.
(A) Mr. Anderson's research idea and
sampling design have several problems. List four of the problems and explain what you would do to improve
the study if you were Mr. Anderson. (8 points)
(B) After correcting all of the sampling design issues following
your suggestions, Mr. Anderson expanded his sampling to the nearby Taan Forest Park (TFP). After properly
analyzing the data, he concluded that the NTU campus has higher α-diversity and β-diversity than TFP. Mr.
Anderson is very excited and wants to explain his findings to his partner. However, his partner has no
background in biology or ecology, and has no idea what a-diversity andβ-diversity are. Help Mr. Anderson
explain his finding using plain language. Try to be as precise as possible. (4 points)