Berlese Funnel

Our beautiful bottle of soil

      Our Berlese Funnel test was set up correctly and carried out in accordance with the correct procedure; however, we found no organisms. In the ethanol from the petri dish there was nothing living that could be seen by the naked eye. Each day, the bottom of the soda bottle had a little more soil that had fallen through the funnel, but not enough that it would throw off the results of the experiment, so I think our soil sample just didn't have any macroinvertebrates.

Looking good under the lamp

     
      When we were collecting the soil, we found some insects and worms that were in the soil, but somehow (as in through human error) we had none of these organisms in our soil sample. In particular, we saw earthworms in our soil when we collected it, and these organisms' function is to recycle nutrients and carbon in soil. We didn't see any other distinct organisms that were in the soil, but the worms do play an important role in the formation of soil.

No organisms :(

      After discussing the lab with other groups in the class, many had similar results as us in the fact that they had either very few organisms or none at all. This could be a result of many different scenarios, but perhaps it could be because of the fact that each group's collected soil was unfertilized and may have had less nutrients than nutrient-heavy soil that would attract and contain more macroinvertebrates. This overwhelming lack of organisms creates a pattern throughout the class of low levels of macroinvertebrates in the soil.