Jordan Overturf

5/5/16
Camilla Cummings
Presentation Reflection
On Wednesday, the fourth of May on the third floor of the Smith Memorial
Student Union building at around 12:30, I went to Student Research Symposium.
There was a choice between the oral presentations or the poster presentations.
Because I like looking more than listening to people talk, I chose to go to the poster
presentations. This symposium was located at the ballroom and for good reason, for
there were many posters. I am not a very intellectual person so most of the subjects
the posters presented confused me and therefore I could not understand them for
lack of knowledge. There was one that stuck out to me though, perhaps it was
because of its pictures of small creatures or its display of plants and such.
Nevertheless, without becoming an awkward individual standing and staring at the
board without talking, I casually stood behind another person who was also looking
at the presenters board. Once I got a general understanding of what the board
portrayed, I then stood next to the presenter and talked about his board, asking
questions and such.
The mans name was Konrad Miziolek. When asked by me about what his
major was, he responded with biology and post-mec. I believe this may be post
mechanics and that I have incorrectly spelled it or I wrote it wrong, but I did not ask
him by what he meant by that since that was not the purpose of my visit. What his
project poster portrayed was his study into the diversity of springtails on green
roofs. Springtails are omnivorous organisms that are the largest of the three
lineages of hexapods. They do not directly engage in the decomposition of organic
matter, but contribute to it indirectly through the fragmentation of organic matter.
They can be carried through the air which explains how they get onto the green
roofs. A green roof is partially or completely covered in vegetation thats planted
over a waterproofing membrane. Other layers can be added on to it like irrigation
systems.
Back to the topic of diversity of springtails, Konrad specifically wanted to
observe this diversity between two types of green roofs: Herbaceous and Sedum.
Herbaceous roofs are those with vegetation that contain no woody stems or the
such. Sedum roofs is a large genus of flowering plants contain leaf succulents and
range to about 600 different species of genus. He tested this by putting a pitfall trap
in four different roofs, two of them were herbaceous and the other two were sedum.
These pitfall traps are plastic cups placed into a hole in the ground. The rim of the
cup levels with the top of the soil so that bugs and such would simply fall into the
cup since they dont have a great sense of vision. They replaced the cups every
couple of weeks and counted the species. This was merely an observational project,
but he hypothesized that the herbaceous green roofs would have more diversity
than the sedum green roofs. The results supported this hypothesis, the greatest
result being on a roof that was un-watered. Each roof, though, had their own unique
most dominant morphospecies. They also have different community composition.
Observing the board presented, there were many facts and such that
displayed how his hypothesis was supported. Because this was only an
observational testing, there was no hypothesis or technical end goal other than to
see the end results. When he explained his process of discovering the results, he
only took into account what he did to find them. He did not mention if the weather
affected this in a positive or negative way. He also didnt mention if the process of

Jordan Overturf
5/5/16
Camilla Cummings
Presentation Reflection
gardening or watering these roofs were the same or not. That could also explain the
results but because he didnt take this into account, to me I could not fully trust the
results. It was still interesting to listen and observe though, but I feel that more
study into the areas and treatment of areas should have been taken into account in
order to get full legitimate results.