Final Thoughts

Conclusion: With the gathering of our final results our original question was finally answered: was there more nematodes and nematode diversity in the forest than the campus? No there was not. This proved especially strange because the soil we obtained from the forest had much more obvious organic matter present which impacts the amount of nematodes in a positive way while there was no apparent organic matter in the campus soil (Casper 2019). So external factors that could effect the experiment could be that the forest soil was carried around in a lunch pail unrefrigerated for multiple hours, the campus soils could have been treated with nematodes for pest control, the forest sample may have been collected to close to a trail, and there may have been miscounts due to the microscopic nature of the nematodes. Further experiments would be needed to see if there is really a noticeable difference in nematode amounts but alas we are a simple undergraduate group in a general biology class.