Squirrel Abundance as a function of habitat and other factors

The data for “Squirrel Abundance as a function of habitat and other factors" was collected on Friday October 24 and 31, 2014 from 3:00 to 5:30pm at Woodlot and Urban areas in York University Keele Campus in Toronto Ontario. The weather was gloomy and the sky was covered with clouds not allowing much light to the ground in both days. The wind was not too strong and the temperature was around 13 degrees Celsius. The field experiments (the woodlot or urban areas at York) the time was split equally for both, 1 hour and 15 min. The squirrels we visualized by either binoculars or the naked eye and its characteristics were written down (color, size, activity) and the factors that would affect its abundance such as (human density, competition and food resources). We tried to search for different urban areas to see whether the abundance will change with the change of the other factors. So for the urban area experiment, it was done In front of Vari Hall, behind Lumbers building, and on the campus walk from Lumbers to Vari Hall. While for the woodlot experiment, it was done inside the woodlot and on the edges.

The experiment was replicated to make sure that the data can be generalized as a rule for the squirrel abundance at York University and to be assured that the data was collected in the right way.

The hypothesis for this experiment is the would the abundance of squirrels between urban and woodlot areas be affected by competition ( between same or different species), human density, and food resources.

We predicted prior  the experiment that we are going to find more squirrels in the urban areas than the woodlot wild area due to the high food resources which would attract the squirrels the most compared to the competition and human density.

Group members who did this experiment are: Hasan, Angela, Brad and Enrique.