A REFRESHER ON YOUR

RIVER CONTINUUM PROJECT

1) Reread your handouts describing the project, the goals, and the procedures!! Also reread your class notes on RC since you'll need this knowledge to make proper evaluations of your results.

2) Keep your specimens in labeled jars/vials since I will check your keying and counting work.

3) Keep the lab clean, with labware in the proper places. I WILL take off points (for the entire class - review your syllabus) if I have to pick up after you.

4) Remember to use all class data (each student team = a replicate) on SW and FBI values. THE SAME GOES FOR DENSITY DATA!! Figure out a way to post and share your team's data with the rest of the class (if you list data on the blackboard in lab 109 be sure to include a note to custodians saying "Please Don't Erase"). If you think there is a team value that is a bit wacky, please check with the team about their keying work and their calculations (you may help them find a mistake and it will benefit you and everyone else).

5) Work hard and fast so your team can contribute your data in a timely fashion (i.e. don't wait until the last minute to calculate your SW, FBI, and density values since this will force other teams to wait before they can calculate the means, SD, and t-tests). Remember that you'll need time to produce tables and figures and to write your individual papers!

6) Everyone's paper should include tables (e.g. Table 1, Table 2...) showing (a) their team's data and calculation of FBI, SW (set your Excel worksheet up like my example handouts and print them out), and density, (b) your final Excel calculation of the means, SD, and t-test results (like the example I projected in T Budd's lab. Remember to do the same analyses for density data!), and (c) (optional) your Ca, pH, temp. etc. data for the various sites (alternatively, you could simply give this data - if needed to support your argument - in the text. For example, "stream pH was higher at site B (8.4) than at site C (6.8) and this appears to coincide with a greater abundance of invertebrates at site B").

7) Everyone's paper should include figures (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2...) showing (a) your sampling site maps (with stream order shown), and (b) simple bar graphs (in Excel) illustrating the means and SD for the SW, FBI, and density data for each site.

8) Tables and Figures should be on pages AFTER your sections with text. For example, your >3-5 page paper (the text portion) should have a title, abstract, intro, methods, results, and discussion and THEN the Tables and Figures. Don't bother fitting them into the text as you would see in a published scientific paper (unless you really want to go to the trouble).

9) In your paper, you should make proper in-text citations of your Tables and Figures. For example, you might say (in the Results section) "we found no significant differences in FBI values for any of the 3 sites (Table 2)" or, "SW values were highest for site B (Table 3) which agrees with the prediction of the RC". For more examples of this, refer to any paper in Ecology, Oecologia, or Limnology and Oceanography.

10) You should also consider whether you have data showing the relative abundance of shredders (fly larvae, many caddisflies, pteronarcyd stoneflies), scrapers (pennies, mayflies), collectors (net-spinning caddisflies), and predators (odonates, perlid stoneflies) at each site (again, review your class notes to see how this relates to RC).

11) If you need to consult the geological map again, there is one posted outside geology lab 116 (Brown Hall).

12) Your paper should have the following sections, each with their own purpose (taken from a handout from my Invertebrates course but the principles still apply to this RC project):

ABSTRACT

A one paragraph summary of the entire paper.

INTRODUCTION

This section should give the background and rationale for the experiment. Be succinct but be thorough. You should first describe the general topic (e.g., "Predation by benthic predators is known to regulate populations of zooplankton...") and then progress to your specific set of organisms and the factors you are examining (e.g., "environmental temperature might influence the predation rate of Hydra..."). As you write, you should also convince the reader that this topic is important. Toward the close of this section you should state the goals of the experiment (e.g., "Our goal was to test whether temperature affects..."), along with a formal hypotheses you will test (e.g., "Our hypothesis was that the predation rate of Hydra..."). Do not write goal and/or hypotheses as separate sections of the Introduction; instead, write them as part of the Introduction, in normal sentence fashion.

METHODS & MATERIALS

Give a short explanation of the general methods (e.g., "I pipetted brine shrimp into the dish containing Hydra and counted the time required to..."), the experimental design (e.g., "I compared the predation rate of Hydra held at two different temperatures..."), and the materials (e.g., "I placed several Hydra in a petri dish containing about 20 ml of freshwater...") used to conduct your experiment. Your goal is to write a good M&M section that another researcher could copy if they were interested in repeating your experiment themselves. Weave together your Methods and your Materials - do not write them as separate sections. Also, do not write the M&M as a "recipe". Finally, write this section (and others) in the past tense (i.e., the work already happened and you're reporting on it now).

RESULTS

A good results section should lead the reader through the final results of the study in a clear and concise manner. It should be a written summary of results that also refers to (or "cites") appropriate data tables (e.g., "raw data are shown in Table 1...") and/or figures (e.g., "ingestion rate for animals at 20°C was much higher than at 15°C (Figure 1)..."). Figures can be drawn by hand for the first report but subsequent reports should contain Figures produced in Excel (or another graphing program). Describe the relationships and/or distributions you found. It should not be just tables of data without explanation. Save your interpretations of the results (e.g., "ingestion rate at this condition was higher because the prey were more active and thus contacted the predator more frequently..."), the evaluations of your methods, comparisons of your results with other studies, and your study conclusions for the Discussion section.

DISCUSSION

This section is for drawing conclusions from the data and interpreting them for the reader. What do your results suggest? Discuss the possible causes for patterns you found in the context of your initial questions and hypotheses. Do you accept or reject your original hypothesis? Why? When appropriate, evaluate your methods and how they might have influenced your results. How do the results fit into the big picture of the topic being examined? Indicate any modifications you would suggest for the exercise or questions raised by the exercise. Generally, this is where your opinions and ideas about the project should be presented.

13) GOOD LUCK!