Lab Report Instructions for

Plant Biomass Allocation: A Test with Garlic Mustard

4/5/2018

NOTE: Do not attempt to perform the following calculations by hand, you will have to use the
spreadsheet application Excel. It will help to review the "Computers in Ecology" lab handout. If you
have trouble following the instructions below, see your instructor. All mass measurements are in grams.

Ensuring data quality. The combined data from all lab sections originally contained 1100 plants. Your
instructor then checked to make sure there weren’t any plants with 0.00 g measurements for either the
leaves or the roots. Two plants were found and eliminated found. Your first task is to eliminate from
your dataset any plants whose mass measurements appear to be in error. Open the dataset "Plant
Biomass Data Fall 2016" in Excel. Give the spreadsheet a split screen, with the top part of the screen
showing the first 3 rows of the dataset and the bottom part showing the last few rows. Under the column
heading "Error," in cell F2 enter the formula "=ABS(C2-(D2+E2))." This will tell you how closely the
combined masses of leaves and roots matched the total biomass. Now fill down this formula to the
bottom of that column. To do this select cell F2, hold down the shift key, click on the last cell in the
column, then release the shift key. You have now selected all of the cells below the column heading.
Now pull down the edit menu, select Fill and then Down. This will copy the same formula into each
cell. Now click on the F box at the top of this column to select the entire column. Pull down the Format
menu to Cells and format them as Numbers with 2 decimal places. Now sort your entire dataset (select
all of the column headings and the data under them) by Error. We can expect an error of up to about +
0.03 g based on the accuracy of the balances (+ 0.01 g per measurement). Record how many errors were
greater than 0.03 g, the range of these errors, and the two worst errors. Now delete the plants with errors
greater than 0.03 g. This should leave you with 1091 plants with acceptably accurate data. Save.

Plotting the relationship between % Leaf Biomass and Total Biomass. First, calculate the % Leaf
Biomass (column G) for each plant by dividing each plant's Leaf Biomass by its Total Biomass and
formatting as percentages with no decimal places. Now sort your entire dataset by this new variable.
Eliminate any plants with 100 or greater % Leaf Biomass, if there are any. Your values should now
range from 23-95%. Now you will calculate the mean Total Biomass for each of 7 categories of % Leaf
Biomass, as shown in the table below.

Now move to Sheet 2 of your workbook and build the following table, starting in cell A1:

% Leaf Biomass Mean Total Biomass (g)

23-39
40-49
50-59
60-69
70-79
80-89
90-95
Hint: if Excel tries to automatically format your ranges (e.g., 32-49) as dates, put a space in front of the
first number in each cell. Enter the values for Mean Total Biomass with two decimal places. Adjust the
column widths so you can read the text. Now you will plot the data. Select the entire table, including
column headings. Now make a Column chart using the simplest type of vertical bars. Move and stretch
the chart so that it fills from cell A11 through E34. Make sure you don't stretch it across the page break.
Now format your chart. (1) Delete the default Chart Title. (2) Click on the legend with the colored
square and delete it. (3) Add a label for the x-axis (% Leaf Biomass) and for the y-axis (Mean Total
Biomass (g)).

NOTE: Depending upon which version of Excel you are using, the menus and steps might be different.
Be creative.

Write your lab report as instructed below.

1. The original hypothesis you are testing is based on the following material adapted from Smith and
Smith (2012):

As a plant grows, it allocates its net carbon gain (carbon acquired via photosynthesis minus carbon lost to
respiration) to its various tissue types. In the case of garlic mustard, the plant must choose between
allocating carbon to its roots (thus enhancing water and nutrient acquisition from the soil and anchoring
the plant firmly to the substrate) and to its leaves (thus enhancing photosynthesis and increasing future
carbon gain). Thus, under ideal conditions (no resource limitations), plants with a larger proportion of
biomass allocated to leaf production should be expected to have larger overall biomass because of higher
rates of photosynthesis compared to plants with a smaller proportion of biomass as leaves.

State the original hypothesis you are going to test. Based on the above information, what is the
underlying assumption about the environment in which garlic mustard is growing?

2. Present a prediction of what your plot of the relationship between % Leaf Biomass and Total Biomass
(performed above) should look like if the hypothesis from (1) is correct.

3. Include a copy of your data table and chart from Sheet 2 of your workbook. Evaluate the above
prediction made in (2) - do your data support it or not? For garlic mustard, what seems to be the best
biomass allocation strategy between leaves and roots to achieve the most total plant growth? Be precise.

4. If your prediction in (2) is supported, then the underlying assumption is probably correct. However, if
your prediction is not supported, this assumption could be wrong. In this case, hypothesize a new
underlying assumption that might explain your data. To do this, propose one or more specific resources
that could be limiting garlic mustard growth in the Gordon Natural Area.

5. What percentage of the plants in the initial dataset (N = 1100) was eliminated because of errors
greater than 0.03 g? What was the range of errors and how big were the worst two errors? What might
have caused such errors and how could you redesign the experimental protocols to reduce or eliminate
them? HINT: I am not asking you to identify all possible errors in our experiment, only those that could
have produced errors greater than 0.03 g.