Topic Summaries

Sampling

GCSE > Biology > Edexcel > GCSE Biology Topic Summaries > Ecosystems > Sampling
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Pathogens and non-specific immunity

Resource cycles and environmental change

Science skills: Measuring results

  • Sampling is the process scientists use to look at a section of a habitat and draw conclusions about the whole of it.
  • The section of the habitat studied must be large enough to be representative of the whole of it for accurate predictions to be made.
  • A range of experimental methods using transects (a straight line through the habitat) and quadrats (a frame of square grids) are used by ecologists to assess the distribution and abundance of species in an ecosystem.
  • Methods of measuring the abundance of organisms:
    • Mode: the value that appears most frequently in a data set.
    • Median: the middle number in a data set when displayed in ascending order.
    • Mean (average): the sum of terms divided by the number of terms.

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