CER Day 3

​You are going to ROCK the test tomorrow!!!!!

CER: DAY 3

Is Chocolate for the Birds?

​Research Background: About 9,000 years ago humans invented agriculture as a way to grow enough food for people to eat. Today, agriculture happens all over the globe and takes up 40% of Earth’s land surface. To make space for our food, humans must clear large areas of land, creating a disturbance, or drastic change, to the habitat. This disturbance removes the native plants already there, including trees, small flowering plants, and grasses. Many types of animals including mammals, birds, and insects need these native plants for food or shelter and will now find it difficult to live in the area. For example, a woodpecker bird cannot live somewhere that has no trees because they live and find their food in the trees.

Multiple Choice

True or False: Agriculture happens all over the globe. About 60% of the Earth's land surface is not affected.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

What is the word used to describe "a drastic change to the habitat"?

• distributed

• dissolution

• disturbance

• drastically changed

Multiple Select

Habitat disturbance removes:

• trees

• small flowering plants

• grasses

• sunlight

Multiple Select

If a disturbance occurs in a habitat where a woodpecker lives, why wouldn't it be able to survive?

• trees are gone

• no more sunlight for energy

• shelter is gone

• their main form of food isn't available

​However, some agriculture might help some animals because they can use the crops being grown for the food and shelter they need to survive. One example is the cacao tree, which grows in the rainforests of South America. Humans use the seeds of this plant to make chocolate, so it is a very important crop!
Cacao trees need very little light. They grow best in a unique habitat called the forest understory, which is composed of the shorter trees and bushes under the large trees found in rainforests.

​ To get a lot of cacao seeds for chocolate, farmers need to have large rainforest trees above their cacao trees for shade. In many ways, cacao farms resemble a native rainforest. Many native plant species grow there and there are still taller tree species. However, these farms are different in important ways from a native rainforest.

For example, there are many more short understory trees in the farm than there are in native rainforests. Also, there are fewer small flowering plants on the ground because humans that work on cacao farms trample them as they walk around the farm.

Multiple Select

Cacao trees grow best in a habitat called the forest understory, which is made up of

• shorter trees

• bushes

• larger trees that provide shade

• no trees

Multiple Choice

True or False: There are many more short understory trees and bushes in the cacao farm than there are in native rainforests.

• False

• True

Multiple Choice

True or False: There are a lot more small flowering plants on the cacao farm ground.

• True

• False

Skye is a biologist who wanted to know whether rainforest birds use the forest when they are disturbed by adding cacao farms. Skye predicted she would see many fewer birds in the cacao farms, compared to the rainforest. To measure bird abundance, she simply counted birds in each habitat. To do this she chose one rainforest and one cacao farm and set up two transects in each. Transects are parallel lines along which the measurements are taken. She spent four days counting birds along each transect, for a total of eight days in each habitat.

Multiple Choice

How many rainforests and cacao farms did the biologist, Skye, monitor?

• 1 of each

• 2 of each

• 8

Multiple Choice

True or False: There was a huge difference in the number of birds found in the native rainforest versus the cacao farm!

• False

• True

​Skye’s next steps: Skye was shocked to see so many birds in cacao farms! She decided to take a closer look at her data. Skye wanted to know how the types of birds she saw in the cacao farms compared to the types of birds she saw in the rainforest. She predicted that cacao farms would have different types of birds than the undisturbed rainforest. She thought the bird types would differ because each habitat has different types of food available for birds to eat and different types of plants for birds to live in.

Scientific Question:

What is the effect of cacao farms on the abundance of different bird types?

​THINK about a possible CLAIM.
(don't write it down yet)

​Look at the data -->

Multiple Choice

What would be an acceptable CLAIM?

• Cacao farms have a negative effect on the different bird types.

• Cacao farms have an effect on different bird types.

• I think Cacao farms are a bad thing for different bird types.

I'll write our summary data on the other board for us to reference back to.

​

​Now let's collect data.

Multiple Choice

True or False: The disturbance created by cacao farms benefit some types of birds, while also having a negative effect on other types of birds.

• False

• True

Multiple Choice

True or False: You are going to do your very best on the test tomorrow AND bring your notebook to class so you can use it on the test.

• False

• True