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Post 2: Sources of Scientific Information

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The article I chose is titled “Ecological Relationships between Fungi and Woodpecker Cavity Sites”

I accessed the article through the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) library website at:

http://www.jstor.org.libezproxy.nait.ca/stable/1370514?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

My first step was to decide if the information was academic material or non-academic material. I determined that the article was academic because:

  1. The article was written by experts in the field. The authors are associated with the Florida Gulf Coast University.
  2. The article contains in text citations. Excerpt:

“Active, abandoned, and usurped woodpecker cavities also support large communities of other organisms, giving woodpeckers and their cavities pivotal roles in ecosystem dynamics (e.g., Kilham 1971, Daily et al. 1993, Martin et al 2004).”

  1. The article also contains a bibliography.

My next step was to determine if the article was peer-reviewed or non peer-reviewed. I determined that the article was peer-reviewed as the following is written at the end of the article:

“We acknowledge very helpful editorial, and substantive and stimulating comments and suggestions from Jim Bednarz, Dana Ripper, Richard Conner, an anonymous reviewer, and the editorial staff of The Condor.”

The last step was to determine if the article was research material or review material. The article does not contain any study completed by the authors, nor does it have a methods or results section. This means it is review material, so the article is academic, peer-reviewed, review material.

Citation: Jackson, J. A., & Jackson, B. J. (2004). Ecological Relationships between Fungi and Woodpecker Cavity Sites. The Condor, 106(1), 37-49.

Blog Post #1: Observations Edmonton, Alberta

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Date visited: 29-05-2017 at 19:28pm

Weather: Clear, sunny, +20

Location

My research project site is located in the river valley in Edmonton, Alberta, which has the largest expanse of urban parkland in North America. It is located on the southwest side of the city. The site is around 80m distance from Whitemud Creek, which drains into the North Saskatchewan river. The river is approximately 536m north of the site.

Latitude: 53.500707

Longitude: -113.558685

Area: approximately 5,624 m²

Elevation gain from base of creek to upper research area: approximately 28m

*Stats found using google earth

Topography

The site is located on the side of a valley wall. The terrain varies from very steep drops to flat areas with small ponds. There are small streams constantly flowing through the area, which are fed by a spring located at the top. The side of the valley is made up of limestone rock, which releases iron into the water. The soil next to the streams are bright red due to the formation of rust. There is a rudimentary path that cuts directly through the upper and lower area of the research site, but it is not well used. There is a small waterfall that runs down the lower half and empties into a marshy area, before draining into the Whitemud Creek.

Vegetation

The canopy is dominated by White Spruce (Picea glauca), Balsam Poplar (Populus balsamifera), and Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera). The forest floor is mostly shaded. Other woody species observed: Saskatoon (Amelanchier alnifolia), Dogwood (Cornus stolonifera).

One plant I observed is very rare to the Edmonton river valley – the Round-leaved Orchid (Amerorchis rotundifolia). Other herbaceous plants observed: Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), Western Violet (Viola canadensis), Arctic Raspberry (Ribus arcticus), Blue Columbine (Aquilegia brevistyla).

Questions:

  1. How does the high iron content in the soil affect the plant diversity in the area?
  2. How does the plant diversity change with the slope?
  3. There are small ponds located in the area. How does the iron in the water affect pond life?

Blog 3: Ongoing Field Observations

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Today I visited my field study area given. Given that I hadn’t visited in a month there were several changes since the last time. The ground vegetation is fully covered and consists of grass, clover and dandelion. The clover was much heavier at the top of the grass mound located at the south side of the courtyard. Due to heavy volumes of rain and ground was very moist.

The attribute I plan to study if the honey locust trees at the south side of the courtyard. The six honey locust trees have leaves on most of the tree, however the top foot of each tree did not have leaves. This was a common pattern and uncommon for the tree variety. There are no buds visible on the top of the trees. The remainder of the tree looks healthy with flowers beginning from the trunk.

In looking at the trees I believe the lack of leaves on the top of the trees is the result of the excessive rain and cool temperatures we have experienced. I predict that once the weather warms up and the ground dries up the trees will continue to bloom. In this study the response variable is the six honey locust trees. A potential explanatory variable is the temperature and soil moisture, these variables would be continuous.

Post # 5: Design Reflections

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  1. There were some difficulties in implementing my sampling strategies. It is sometimes difficult to measure out transects if people are nearby, it was also not ideal to count individual bees as when many accumulated, it was hard to keep track. It is also hard to set a control as I would physically have to restrict a bush from any bee pollination and legally I am not allowed to do that. I think in modifying my approach I am also going to relocate my experiment to somewhere less busy where I can spend a significant amount of time without being disturbed. So in saying this, I am going to take my study into my backyard where I have an abundance of vegetation and animals. I am now going to study the effects of watering on fruit trees. My hypothesis is: Fruit trees with more watering of the soil will increase better fruit production.

Blog Post 2: Sources of Scientific Information

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a) The source of ecological information that I found is called, Phylogeography and historical demography of the orchid bee Euglossa iopoecila: signs of vicariate events associated to Quaternary climatic changes.

Frantine-Silva W, Giangarelli D, Penha R, Suzuki K, Dec E, Gaglianone M, Alves-dos-Santos I, & Sofia S. 2017. Phylogeography and historical demography of the orchid bee Euglossa iopoecila: signs of vicariant events associated to Quaternary climatic changes. Conservation Genetics: 18(3) pg. 539.

http://apps.webofknowledge.com.ezproxy.tru.ca/full_record.do?product=WOS&search_mode=GeneralSearch&qid=5&SID=1C85padMeVxVdbRYy3V&page=1&doc=2

b) This is a academic peer-reviewed research article.

c) The authors of this article are scholars of their field, therefore making them experts. This paper includes in text citations and has a bibliography. The article is peer reviewed because it has a submission date and a published date and was further published in a peer reviewed journal. Lastly, this article is a research article because it is written as a summary of the authors research questions which included the conduction of an experiment. The experiment can be outlined in the different headings of the article such as the methods/materials and the results.

Blog Post 1: Observations

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I have selected to observe Paul Lake in Kamloops, British Columbia. This is a Provincial Park in which the public is welcome to use the campground or the beach for recreational use. Paul Lake is lined with small mountains which are covered with conifers. The recreational site has a vast amount of grassy areas which slowly turns into a sandy beach as it connects to the water. I visited this site at 12pm on a Thursday (June 22, 2017) afternoon. It was apporximately 20 degrees celsius with  clouds covering the blue sky. At the Provincial Park I became curious about the water levels at Paul Lake and how they are affected in the differing seasons with the temperature changes and climate changes. I also began to wonder how wildlife, such as geese or bugs, are affected by the water level changes. More explicitly I came up with these three questions, (1) what are the causes of water level changes? (2) Has the water levels at Paul Lake shown the same general trends over the years? And (3) how do these causes affect wildlife inhabiting nearby areas?

Post 4: Sampling Strategies

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The virtual forest sampling tutorial really helped me learn the techniques of sampling.  The fastest estimate time was the area haphazard method at 2 hrs and 43 minutes. The percent errors are as follows:

Haphazard- Common

Red maple-  4%

White Oak – 7%

Haphazard- Rare

Black Tupelo- 70%

Downy Juneberry- 76%

 

Random Systematic- Common

Red Maple- 8%

White Oak- 8%

Random Systematic- Rare

Hawthorn- 76%

Black Cherry- 96%

Random Sys- Common

Red Maple- 4%

White Oak- 20%

Random Sys- Rare

White Ash- 68%

Basswood- 66%

 

The accuracy changed greatly with species abundance and most with the rare species. Accuracy seemed to decrease.   Random/Systematic produced data closest to the actual values, although not as fast in time, but the percent error values were lower in haphazard sampling.

 

Post 8: Creating Figures

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After some messing around in Excel for a bit I created two figures, which contain two and three graphs respectively, though there is significant overlap between the two. They both contain a graph that displays the relationship between measured sunlight and branch growth, a graph showing the relationship between the distance to the nearest neighbour[ing tree] and branch growth and the second figure includes a graph showing the relationship between distance to nearest neighbour and measured sunlight.

I was surprised at first to see a stronger correlation between distance to “nearest nieghbour” and “branch growth” than between “measured sunlight” and “branch growth”, however this surprise quickly dissipated when the second graph measuring these variables (created from data taken at a second, lower elevation study area) actually showed a negative relationship, while that of “sunlight” and “branch growth” remained positive.

I was also quite surprised to see that the data did not fall into two distinct sets, or groupings, as I had initially predicted would occur (due to the observed distinction between number of branches on the uphill and downhill sides of each tree in the field). Prior to, and during my data collection, there seemed to be an obvious schism between the two sides of nearly every replicate. While the data still show a positive relationship between light measurements and frequency of branch growth, I suspect the sample size was not large enough to reflect this apparent discrepancy I noted in the field.

I know it sounds simple, but I actually struggled a bit with the question of how to properly label the axes. “Sunlight?” “measured sunlight?” “light”? After some deliberation I settled on “sunlight (W/m2)”, though as with which elements I will include in the figures that I put in the final report, I may change this.

I also was unsure about the whether or not to include the third graph (which shows relationship between “distance to nearest neighbour” and “sunlight”). I am still unsure whether both figures will include this graph, or if it will be included as a separate figure in the final report.

I also plan to take a harder look at the captions below each figure when putting together the final report to determine if they require further elaboration.

Blog Post # 7 Theoretical perspectives

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Animal behaviour has been something that we as our own species are fascinated with, we want to know what makes an animal tick, why does the cat flick its tail upwards whilst sometimes it “wags” it side to side. Behaviour of animals has become such interesting topic over the past few years as we seek answers to why animals do the things they do.

The major idea that underpins my research is the why, why and how does the Elephants drinking behaviour change as it gets hotter, how does it change as it gets colder. The Anatomy of the Elephant very well may hold the key to the answer as their enormous weight is matched to a small surface area (relative).

Keywords

African Elephant ( Loxodanta africana ), Temperature, Drinking

Blog Post #6: Data Collection

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My data collection has come with a few hardships to over come because of the change of seasons, we are currently going into our dry season. The change has brought about colder weather and more overcast days, we have also had an unusually high amount of rain for this time of year. This late rain has kept the natural water pans full and productive. The grass in the southern areas of the Timbavati is still green whilst in the north where I am is a far drier. From my observations it seems like the breeding herds of Elephants have stayed in the South to utilize the greener food.

To try and maximize my data I can collect I have chosen 10 replicates or water holes to monitor this has allowed me to monitor both the Northern and Southern areas of our traversing area. I have set the cameras up generally durning the mid-day as it is when I have time off in between game drives.  They then spend 5 days and night at the pre-determined water hole. Each camera is set to capture a photo at 15 minute intervals, each camera also takes a picture if the motion sensor is triggered. Generally an animal will trigger a photo at about 15 meters from the camera so I try to pick an area closest to the water that gives the biggest field of view to maximize photos taken. One thing to take into account is the curious hyenas who have on one occasion tasted my one camera trap ( it is still in one piece, barely) and on the other occasions come for a quick sniff.  On 11  different occasions I have had only Elephant bulls coming down to drink while in the month my cameras have been up I have not counted one breeding herd of Elephants. I am however starting to see a pattern as to when the Elephants, bulls in particular come down to drink. It seems as the heat of the day does have influence when the Bulls come down to drink rather than the time of day. On most occasions the Elephants have drank from 17 -20 Degrees Celsius  which seems to be the preferred temperature for the Bulls to drink irrelevant to the time of day. This ancillary pattern shows that the bulls as unfortunately that is all I have been able to capture on traps do have a preference as to what temperature they drink at. This could be assumed that the heat of the day does have something to do with their drinking activities

 

Most water holes that I have monitored have however been very quiet in terms of Elephant activity, Impala and Warthog, have been the far busiest at the water points.  This is not of any surprise as the Impala and the Warthog are water dependant species. I have also captured, lion, leopard, Hyena, buffalo, waterbuck, doves,  Egyptian geese, and mongoose. The Elephant bulls have favoured one dam much more than any other and in hind sight it may have been more beneficial to leave the camera traps at my first two water holes that I chose to study.