Small Mammal Community Diversity Within Nearby Prairie Sites and Forested Sites Around Itasca State Park

Abstract

Diversity and species richness of mammals were tested at two different habitats near Itasca State Park, a prairie and a forest. We thought that each of these would be similar between the two habitats. Traps were set and checked for three days to get data to test our hypothesis. We found that the prairie had greater species richness, but the forest had more diversity. A prairie site and a forest site both have a certain amount of diversity in and between each of them. We hypothesize that each site will have a number of animals that is in one or the other and some animals that live in both habitats. We also suspect that both habitats will have a similar amount of diversity. We set traps at each site and checked them for three days each to measure the differences in diversity of each habitat.