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Laboratory Practice

Teacher: Eloisa Sardinha Course: Biology Laboratory

Grade: 10th Duration: 1hr.
Date: 09/30/2021

Names: Oscar Gomez, Priscila Pratt, Marcos Rodriguez and Eduardo Robles
Class: 10-I Group: 5

Energy Flow in Food Webs: How Penguins Select Prey

Introduction

A food web consists of all the food chains in a single ecosystem. Each living thing in
an ecosystem is part of multiple food chains. Each food chain is one possible path
that energy and nutrients may take as they move through the ecosystem. All of the
interconnected and overlapping food chains in an ecosystem make up a food web.
For this activity you’ll analyze data about penguin diving trips to capture prey and
discover why penguin parents ignore other prey in their search for anchovies. By the
end of the lab activity, you will have a basic understanding of how energy dynamics
influence penguin hunting trips and the importance of prey options for penguin
conservation.

Objective

● Students will be able to analyze penguin camera data for evidence of

prioritization of prey and the effect of dive depth on prey variety.
● Students will be able to communicate how penguins prioritize capturing
anchovies to ensure their chicks have the energy required to reach maturity
and maintain, or even increase, their population.
Activity
1. Answer the following questions first:

o What are some of the challenges penguins may face feeding their
chicks? Leaving them alone to get food.

o How do penguins capture food? With their beaks by swimming.

o How might a disruption in the penguin food web impact the chicks vs.
the adult penguins? If the adults are far from their chicks they
can become food of other predators and the chicks without the
adults are too weak.

2. Watch the clip the teacher will show and answer the following questions:

○ How do scientists study penguins? By placing cameras and tracking

devices on them.
○ How has your understanding of how penguins capture food changed?
Our understanding didn’t change because we already knew that
penguins had to swim to capture their food.
○ Why is it important for the adult penguins to find food as soon as
possible? Yes, because they need for them to live and also for their
chicks to live so if they don’t find food as soon as possible their
babies could die of hunger.
3. Open the Excel document called Penguin Camera Data and get familiar
with the sheets:

o Each sheet from the Penguin Camera Data Set concerns a single,
individual penguin (each penguin was assigned the number on the
bottom of its sheet) and documents a series of dives.

o Column A: The dive duration (yellow).

o Column B: The estimated depth of the dive (blue).

o Column C: If prey was seen, the minute at which it was seen is given.
 o Column D: If the penguin chased or caught the prey, the minute at
which it chased, is given.

o Column E: The type of prey is recorded in the Prey Type column

o Column F: General notes

o Most of the fish are anchovies and the 'shrimp' are actually not
shrimp, but another crustacean called 'squat lobster' or 'lobster krill'

Part I: Review and Analyze the Data

1. As a group scan the data for your penguin(s). How can you use the data
to better understand how the penguins capture prey? For example, you
may wish to find the average time it takes the penguins to capture each of
the types of prey. You could organize the data for each type of prey into a
table like the one shown below.

Shrimp

Penguin Time See Prey (min) Time Catch Prey (min) Max Dive Depth

2 4.03 0 22.92

3 5.09 0 1.39

7 4.35 5.45 57.56

8 6.10 0 3.97
 11 2.13 0 3.53

15 5.28 0 52.85

17 4.47 0 41.23

21 4.30 0 35.32

22 4.37 4.99 34.62

23 0 0 0

Squid

Penguin Time See Prey(min) Time Catch Prey(min) Max DIve Depth

2 2.40 0 18.31

3 7.42 0 0.0076

7 0 0 0

8 0 0 0

11 0 0 0

15 5.925 0 27.99

17 0 0 0

21 0 0 0

22 0 0 0

23 0 0 0
 Jellyfish

Penguin Time See Prey(min) Time Catch Prey(min) Max DIve Depth

2 0.4 0 0.6

3 0 0 0

7 0 0 0

8 0 0 0

11 0 0 0

15 0 0 0

17 0 0 0

21 7.54 0 3.2578411

22 0 0 0

23 0 0 0

Anchovies

Penguin Time See Prey(min) Time Catch Prey(min) Max DIve Depth

2 5.79 5.27 11.08

3 6.73 6.73 0.9

7 4.29 4.60 68.83

8 4.44 4.78 3.32

11 1.27 5.02 4.91

15 0 0 0

17 6.01 7.98 1.15

21 0 0 0

22 0 0 0

23 4.48 4.48 1.73

 2. Now, on your own choose 2-3 penguins to analyze the data. You can
focus on the following questions to help yourself in the analysis:
· Whether there is a prey preference, and if there is, what is the extent of
the preference?
· Whether there is a link between prey types encountered and dive
depth.

Marcos: 2, 7, 15

Whether there is a prey preference, and if there is, what is the extent of the
preference? Yes, there are preferences, as we can see, most of the penguins like
fish and anchovies but there are penguins like #2, penguins that eat everything
because he was the only penguin that dived in every food so it means that he has no
problem eating jellyfish or squid that many penguins don't like.

Whether there is a link between prey types encountered and dive depth.

Yes, because when a penguin reaches a max dive depth of 20 or more we can say
that he really wants to get that food so if they go even lower we can say that they
really like the food they are searching for.

Priscila: 2, 3, 7
Whether there is a prey preference, and if there is, what is the extent of the
preference? Yes, there is a preference. None of the penguins like jellyfish or squid
and only #7 was able to catch shrimp. They all prefer Anchovies or fish.

Whether there is a link between prey types encountered and dive depth. Yes there is
because depending on the depth the more type of food you find.

Oscar:

Whether there is a prey preference, and if there is, what is the extent of the
preference?

None of them eat shrimp, they don't eat squid and jellyfish they only like
anchovies.

Whether there is a link between prey types encountered and dive depth.

Yes because they lived in different areas of the sea.

Part II. Group Analysis

1. Share your analysis with your group members. How did their penguins
compare?

Their favorite is anchovies and a few of them also like shrimp, but none of
them like squid or jellyfish.

2. Research the caloric value of anchovies and shrimp to compare energetic

values, which one has a higher caloric value?
 ● A shrimp has 84 calories.
● An anchovy has 210 calories.

3. What conclusions can you draw from looking at all ten penguins?

They all prefer to go for anchovies because it has more calories.

4. Based on your comparison of your penguins to those of the rest of the

group, why is it important to study large data sets?

Because with a large data set we can know more precisely all the preferences
of the penguins.

5. What are some of the challenges the researchers faced analyzing the
camera footage? You can look at the “Notes” section to refresh your
memory.

The video clearly showed how the camera got broken or the footage was too dark for
them to see.

6. After analyzing the penguin camera data how would you expand on this
study? What data could you collect? What questions would you research?

How different can a penguin that just eats anchovies than a penguin that just eats
shrimp and other food from the data? We could see that they give a lot of food to
their babies. We could collect the data of how many individual prey they will hunt a
day.

Part III. Expert Analysis

7. How did your analysis compare to that of the experts in the video? What
might account for the differences, if any?

Our analysis was basically the same as the experts in the video, when it comes to
their food and their preferences. But the experts' video was more complete research
and they talked about other animals that can steal penguins food and we didn’t but
besides that we did pretty much the same.