Description
Grades 6–12. Help students develop a new appreciation for the richness of biodiversity. This hands-on kit provides them with the opportunity to do the same habitat-sampling research that ecologists do. The difficulty ecologists face in providing precise numbers of species and individuals within a species becomes apparent. Kit includes enough materials for 30 students working in groups of 3 to perform a soil sample biodiversity test. From the samples taken, students classify each specimen and then use the data to calculate biodiversity. Three indices can be used—species richness, Simpson’s index, and the Shannon-Wiener index.