Algernon natural prairie serves as living laboratory

By Tyler Haigh and Tyler Welbig

Students in biology teacher Ross Blank-Libra’s class took part in an activity last week in the Algernon natural prairie along Sixth Street.
The class caught grasshoppers and marked them, then later attempted to see how many of the grasshoppers that were marked could be spotted, compared to how many new grasshoppers were found. This showed the students how a population model works. The students recorded their data to observe the experiment and come to different conclusions on the how the project went.

Blank-Libra said the experiment should teach the students about population counts.

“There are a lot of bugs out here,” Blank-Libra said, “so we thought that we would put our population model into practice.”

While learning, the students had a good time, as well. Sophomore Jennifer Niemeyer said her group was catching a lot of grasshoppers.

“We are catching a lot of bugs,” Niemeyer said. “We have caught more than yesterday.”

This week the class will calculate the number of grasshoppers that inhabit the natural prairie and compare them to the numbers that were caught by students. From there the class will be able to observe how the population model works and get an overall better look at the biological life on the Algernon natural prairie site.