Research Data Summary

In this experiment, small and large lima beans were used to test whether or not bean beetles had a preferred site size for oviposition. Our hypothesis proposed that if a preference was shown, a greater number of eggs would be oviposited on the larger lima beans compared to small lima beans. We predicted that they would prefer the larger bean because it has a greater surface area, therefore finding a spot on the bean to oviposit would be easier to do. On the contrary, our results show that we reject the null hypothesis due to the fact that our p-value was so extremely small. Because of this, we can conclude that C. maculatus prefer smaller sized lima beans for oviposition. The preference for a smaller lima bean could be due to a chemical cue preferred by, or undesirable to, bean beetles. Another reason could be that the nutrient to surface area ratio is greater, or because larger beans may be more appealing to predators. According to a similar experiment conducted by Jason Cope and Charles Fox, bean beetle eggs were distributed so that resources were maximized per individual offspring (2002). They found that females preferred a larger mass compared to surface area due to the quantity of resources available inside the seed. Although our experiments measured different variables, in both findings we can identify that a larger surface area is not ideal for bean beetle site preference for oviposition. In an experiment conducted by Grace Pitman, Tyler Flockhart, and Ryan Norris, they measured which size and what density of a milkweed patch was preferred by the monarch butterfly for oviposition (2018). Their results showed that a small, low-density patch had the highest egg density. This was because larger patches showed an increase in predator abundance (Flockhart et al. 2018). When determining sites for oviposition, the one that increases probability of offspring survival is more desirable. Therefore, choosing a small, low-density site for oviposition increased the probability that the offspring would survive and reproduce. This relates to our experiment because we tested to find the preferred site that would increase

Sample Solution

  Inferential statistics. Qualitative data. Quantitative data. Explain the differences between correlational and experimental research methods. Discuss the importance of ethical considerations in psychological research involving human participants. Statistics play a vital role in psychological research, as it is used to interpret, evaluate and draw conclusions from collected data sets. It allows researchers to make sense of large amounts of numerical or categorical information by organizing, summarizing and analyzing it in meaningful ways that can be interpreted