Biology 3144L-02 - Ecology Lab

Ecology Lab – Bio 3114-01             R. O. Bierregaard        Office hours:
Fall 2007                                            456 Woodward            W: 12-1:30
W 2-4:50PM                                      704 333 2405 (h)            or by appointment
                                                           687-8673 (o)
                                                           rbierreg@uncc.edu

Lab schedule available and supporting links on Dr. Barden's webpage: http://www.bioweb.uncc.edu/faculty/barden/elab/schedule.f09.L01.htm 

Statistical Analyses:

Paired and unpaired t-tests -  Wilcoxon unpaired test -
Wilcoxon paired test - 2X2 Contingency Table



Requirements:      Write-up drafts (10% weighted by weeks). Write-up final (50% weighted by weeks). Quizzes (30%).Take-home final (10%)

Lab Write-up:       

1. Papers must be submitted via email, preferably in MSWord.

2. The name of the file must begin with your initials and then a word to identify which lab you're reporting on, e.g. and whether it is draft or final version: rb_pond_draft.doc or rb_pond_final.doc.

3. The report must begin with your name, date report due (not submitted!), and the full title of the report.

4. Reports are due the day of lab (before midnight) one week after the day we finish the experiment or study.

5. If you didn't follow instructions 1-3, the paper will not be considered submitted.

6. Your papers should have 4 (or 5, if there is a Literature Cited) labeled sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. They will count 30, 20, 20, 30 points, respectively.

7. Details of paper organization:
     The Introduction presents the "big picture" background for the lab. What is the biological question or process we're interested in? Competition? Habitat and species distribution? Water quality and aquatic species? What relevant research has been done on the topic? This will come mostly from my introductory remarks and discussion, but some outside research may be needed.
     Clearly identify the purpose of the lab with a sentence that begins, "The purpose of this lab was to....".
     Mention where we did the study (in general terms). Save details for the Methods section.
     Methods: This section must be written in the past tense (you are describing what you DID) and be detailed enough that one of your fellow students could recreate your work exactly based only on what you write. Include a map of our study Area (from GoogleEarth). Include all statistical tests that were performed.
     The Results section will just present the outcome of the field work. Keep the discussion out of this section. Make sure you present the results of the statistical tests (see below for details). You need to include at least a couple of summary sentences. If you only submit a table or graph, you will get a 15 out of 20 points, even if all the results are in the table.
     The Discussion is just that. It relates your results back to the questions you presented in the Introduction. Always look for a biological explanation of the results before copping out with "our sample size was not large enough," or, "due to our inability to identify the species more accurately...."

8. 2 points will be deducted from the paper for each sentence that says nothing more than "The data are in Table 1."

9. Points will also be deducted for bad writing (see examples below), especially incomplete sentences!

10. Use the spell-checker.

11. Over the course of the semester you have 5 "late days" of grace period. You can use them all on one report (i.e. submit a report 5 days late) or spread them out over the semester (i.e. submit 1 report 2 days late and 3 reports a day late each).

12. If citations are used, use the "name-year" system of referencing citations, rather than numbered footnotes.  When using the name-year system, use the abbreviated citation in your text and the full citation in your Literature Cited section. Here is an example of the three ways to cite references in the text of your paper.
     a. The discovery in normal cells of genes capable of causing tumors can be considered a milestone in cancer research (Stehelin and others 1976).
     b. Recent work (Sarkar and Sarkar 1995) has confirmed the importance of this finding.
     c. As Bishop and Varmus (1985) point out, numerous results now suggest that changes in these genes transform normal cells into cancerous ones.

Quizzes: We will have a very short quiz most weeks. They start at 2 pm sharp and last about 10 minutes.  The format will be very short answers covering material in the previous lab. It may be on techniques, statistics, or identification of some critters we encountered in the field.
     If we plot data in graphs, be able to recreate the graph with a different set of data. The lowest quiz score for the semester will be dropped.
     If you are going to be absent for an unavoidable reasons, call me on or before the day of the lab to arrange makeup. 
     To avoid a late fee, you must make up missed lab quizzes before the next lab. This is your responsibility, not mine!  

BAD writing examples: (Mega points will be deducted from your papers if I am tempted to include something you submitted in this collection.)

Induction

     Knowing that soil is one of earth’s natural resources that is often made by man to serve as an energy source for plants, one would suspect that soil is a needed product for plants to grow. However, soil have three major components.
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There were no differences in plant community within the varies of types of soil.
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After completing this observation the class has confirm that from the late 1800’s to 1950 both female and male lived a very average life spand.
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The individual tree assessed in this experiment using the two sample t-test had a more significant difference in the end results, but all of the trees measured in the class and using the paired t-test is a stronger test and has more weight in falsifying Nobel’s statement.
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There are three gradients of soil type: xeric, the dry region mainly desserts, mesic, the moist region, and hydric, the really moist region, mainly the swamps but in this study, the xeric, mesic and a middle transition region will be observed.
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The basal area is a parameter that forestry typeuse by dividing the diameter by half: (pi)(r squared).
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This soil may be loamy in which great gardens of made out of because of its perfect balance of sand, silt and clay and its healthy percentage of organic material.
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How to write P-value statements for your statistical tests

Frequently this semester, you will need to report means and P values for statistical tests. Here is an example how I would like you to write these sentences:

"There was no difference between the height of freshman males and sophomore males at UNCC (181.2 cm vs. 182.3 cm, respectively; unpaired t-test, df = 18, P = 0.82; Table X)"

Or

"Men at UNCC were significantly taller their sophomore year than their freshman year (182.3 vs. 181.2 cm, respectively; paired t-test, df = 9, P = 0.003; Table X)"

In other words, put the biological information into words in the sentence. Put the statistical information in parentheses using a series of commas. Refer to your table of data as the last entry in the parentheses.