Chapter
3. Crash course in biodiversity science

3. Crash course in biodiversity science

How do we study biodiversity? How do we produce reliable and relevant new information?

In the video we learned about the scientific method and why it is so effective.

The clip comes with subtitles in English. Just click play, select the gear icon on the lower right and select subtitles in English.

Read more about how we study biodiversity

  1. Graduate thesis about the effects of the pollinator community on the seed production of mountain avens (in Finnish)

    Link to master thesis

    Tiusanen, M. 2015: Pölyttäjäyhteisön vaikutus lapinvuokon siementuotantoon. Pro gradu, Bio- ja ympäristötieteellinen tiedekunta, Helsingin yliopisto.

Find out

The scientific method really is the framework that guides research. It can be hard to see the steps of the scientific method in research articles, because in articles we have to condense and rearrange the text according to the publisher’s requirements.

The scientific method in a Master’s thesis
Mikko studied the same ecosystem again in his PhD.

One of the articles in his PhD was cited especially often in other publications. Here is a list of articles that cited Mikko’s work.

Project ideas on biodiversity

Apply the scientific method to your own research. You could for instance use the example from the video about birds and areas, or come up with your own research project.

The steps of the scientific method are

Factors affecting biodiversity are often studied for instance by measuring biodiversity in different kinds of environments and seeing, if the conditions are correlated with the level of biodiversity. It is important to measure diversity in exactly the same way in each environment.