Assignment guidelines- Animal Behaviour (BIOL 3401)

Transcription

1 Assignment guidelines- Animal Behaviour (BIOL 3401) Title page: I would like a title page on all reports. Please provide: (1) a descriptive original title (2) your name (3) you partner s name (make sure this is clearly indicated as a partner so I know who s report it is) (4) course number (5) lab day (6) and institution. General formatting: Font size of 11 or 12. Do not vary your font size throughout the report. Black ink. Pages numbers should go in the top right corner of the page (do NOT add your name as a header). Indent each new paragraph. To avoid unnecessary errors I strongly advise spell check and proof reading! Sections: Abstract and introduction do not get headers! All other sections get headings. The headings should be on their own separate line to the left of the page. Sub- headings are below the main headings to the left of the page and are italicized. Begin the sub- heading with a capitol letter. Example: Method Experimental animals Abstract: Maximum of 250 words. The abstract should describe (1) the purpose of the study, (2) outline the major findings and (3) state the main conclusions. It should be concise, informative, explicit and intelligible without reference to the text. Use both common and scientific names of animals at first mention in the Abstract unless they are given in the title. Avoid using references. Introduction: State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results. When writing an introduction ensure that it is clear to the reader why you are running this experiment. What is your research question? What are your hypotheses?

2 The Introduction should be brief, not normally exceeding two manuscript pages (in our case, a maximum of 2 pages double spaced). You must cite references in an introduction. Any information you gather from papers will be cited otherwise you are plagiarizing. DO NOT CITE THE LAB MANUAL. Method: Clearly state what you did. Make sure a reader can replicate your study based on the detail you provide. Feel free to use subheadings to break up the methods a bit if this seems appropriate. Results: In your results section you are presenting a summarized version of your raw data. There will be a written section as well as graphs and/or tables. This section should include results that are relevant to the hypotheses outlined in the introduction and considered in the discussion. Never discuss the implications of the results or why you think something happened this goes in your discussion. When possible, data should be presented as means±standard errors. I will not be tough on you when it comes to stats. For many of the labs you can run chi- squared tests. Every now and then the stats may get a bit more complicated. Never say that something is significant if you have not run statistical tests on the numbers! Graphs: We are moving away from figure titles and into figure captions. A figure caption is similar to a figure title, however, it provides more information to the reader. E.g Salmon Nonsalmon Control Beats above basal rate Time (min) Figure 2. Mean SE opercular beat rate above basal level for juvenile Atlantic salmon tested with blank water (N ¼ 20), water scented with odour from a predator fed a salmon (N ¼ 20) and water scented with odour from a predator fed a nonsalmon (N ¼ 20) over a 5 h observation period. Scent was added at time ¼ 0.

3 Label your figure as Figure 1. Figure 2. Etc You always label below a figure. Then you will add a description of the figure what is it showing, if you have no legend what do the bars mean (see Figure 1. below), how many organisms in your sample (N=#), etc. Formatting your figure: Things you DO NOT want: a large border around the figure gridlines Things you want: Standard error bars Good labeling (x and y axis titles) Clear symbols/bars

4 1 (a) Proportion of time 0 1 (b) L R Blank water Nonsalmon Salmon Nonsalmon Salmon Figure 1. Proportion of time spent by juvenile Atlantic salmon in unscented (,) and scented (-) arms of the Y-maze in (a) control versus scented trials (L ¼ left arm; R ¼ right arm of the maze) and (b) scented trials. In scented trials, the water contained odour from a predator fed a nonsalmon or a salmon. Means þ SE are shown. Tables: Tables are also used to summarize data. Tables are numbered consecutively, with Arabic numerals, in accordance to their appearance in the text. The first table you talk about in your written results would appear as Table 1. The heading and title of a table go above the table and a small summary will go below the table. See the example below. Tables should never have vertical lines. The main body of the table should not have horizontal lines.

5 e.g. Table 1 Variables for three replicates of converging and nonconverging pairs of mosquitoes in the direct benefits experiment Replicate Convergence N R 0 T c r 1 Yes No Yes No Yes No Net reproductive rate (R 0 ) ¼ lxmx (where lx ¼ survivorship, and mx ¼ expected number of daughters); generation time (T c ) ¼ xlxmx/r 0 ; intrinsic rate of increase (r) ¼ lnr 0 /T c. Significance was determined using a Wald chi-square test, df ¼ 1. No significant differences between treatments were detected (P > 0.05). Discussion: Here is where you discuss you results. You will need to read journal articles and perhaps other sources to appropriately discuss your results. You may have found results similar to another paper OR your results may oppose those of another researcher. Either way this is interesting. It is often helpful to begin your discussion with a summary of the main results. The main purpose of the Discussion, however, is to comment on the significance of the results and set them in context of previous work. The Discussion should be concise and not excessively speculative. Abbreviations: Define abbreviations at first mention in the abstract and the main text. For example, if you use Sackville Waterfowl Park numerous times in your report and want to abbreviate it as SWP you must show this at first mention in the abstract and introduction i.e. Sackville Waterfowl Park (SWP) References: Check that: all references in the text are in the reference list and vise versa dates and spellings match complete details are given for the articles, book, etc. based on the following reference style. In the text: All citations in the text should refer to: 1. Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication; e.g. (LeBlanc 2012) 2. Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication; e.g. (LeBlanc and Aiken 2012) 3. Three or more authors: first author's name followed by "et al." and the year of publication. Note that 'et al.' is not in italics. E.g. (LeBlanc et al. 2012)

6 Do not use commas to separate the author's name from the date. Use lower- case letters to distinguish between two papers by the same authors in the same year (e.g. Packer 1979a). List multiple citations in chronological order (e.g. Zahavi 1972; Halliday 1978; Arnold 1981a, b), using a semicolon to separate each reference. In the reference list: References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after the year of publication. To help readers locate 'et al.' citations with the same first authors in the reference list, list references with three (or more) names after those with two, by date, as in the following sequence: Marin & Silva 1992; Marin, Silva & Lopez 1986; Marin, Lopez & Silva 1989 Use the following system for arranging your references: ***Notice how every line except the first is indented*** a. For periodicals Robinson, M. H. & Robinson, B The stabilimentum of the orb web spider, Argiope argentata: an improbable defense against predators. Canadian Entomologist, 102, b. For books Bailey, N. J Statistical Methods in Biology. 2nd edn. London: Unibooks. c. For multiauthor books Emlen, S. T The evolution of cooperative behaviour in birds. In: Behavioural Ecology (Ed. by J. R. Krebs & N. B. Davies), pp Oxford: Blackwell Scientific. d. For theses Smith, J. K Investigations on a freshwater crab. Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham. e. Forum articles should include volume and part number and Web site address and be cited as: Johnson, A. R Scent marking in hyaenas: reply to Jones. Animal Behaviour, 57, F41- F43. Note that journal titles in the reference list should be written in full. In the case of publications in any language other than English, the original title is to be retained. However, the titles of publications in non- Latin alphabets should be transliterated, and a notation such as "(in Russian)" or "(in Greek, with English abstract)" should be added.

7 Work accepted for publication but not yet published should be referred to as "in press". References concerning unpublished data and "personal communications" should not be cited in the reference list but may be mentioned in the text. Appendix: In your appendix you can add raw data, data not presented in the results, etc. Anything that you want the reader to see that is not part of the main paper.