INDEPENDENT PROJECT GUIDELINES

During General Ecology, you will choose and do your own research project. This entails finding a suitable problem (one that can be done given the time and resources), writing a research proposal that describes your hypotheses and the experiments or observations to test your hypotheses, doing the research, writing a paper on your findings (in scientific format) and presenting your results at a symposium. The following information is to help you through each of these stages.

CHOOSING YOUR RESEARCH PROJECT

Start thinking about possible projects AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Keep this is mind when you are doing the scheduled labs; consider building on the scheduled lab design or look around at other possibilities when you are in the field. Talk to us about possible projects and your ideas. You can approach this in two different ways:

l. Choose an organism you want to study and find a feasible question to answer,

OR

2. Choose some problem, theory, hypothesis that interests you, and find an organism that would be feasible to use to study it.

Remember to keep your research project manageable. You will be surprised by how hard it is to do the simplest of ecological field experiments well. Discuss the feasibility of your project with the course staff. Also keep in mind that our budget for these projects is very limited. It is likely that we have much of the equipment you might want so be sure to ask. If we do not have the equipment you want, it might be necessary for you to purchase it or redesign your experiment. Given these constraints, students have done some excellent and interesting projects. The following is a list of possible projects to give you some ideas of research possibilities. We encourage you, however, to come up with new ideas for research projects.

PROJECT IDEAS

SPECIES DISTRIBUTIONS

• plants or intertidal inverts along a natural gradient
  (trees, winter annuals, ferns, mosses, lichens, barnacles, mussels, anemones)
• insects on plants; gall-makers, leaf miners, eggs, herbivory damage
• aquatic gradients; pollution

PHYSIOLOGICAL ECOLOGY

• effects of different nutrients, environmental conditions (pH, temperature) on plant or animal growth
• comparisons of similar organisms: C3/C4 plants; ecotypes
• morphological plasticity in plants (stress responses)

POPULATIONS

• effects of different nutrients or environmental conditions on population growth
  (duckweed, zooplankton, algae, insects, bacteria)
• testing population growth models; logistic growth (yeast, algae, bacteria, zooplankton, bacteria)
• estimates of population sizes in contrasting environments (lab or field populations)

DEMOGRAPHY/LIFE HISTORY

• compare reproductive allocation: iteroparous vs semelparous plants,
  stable vs disturbed areas (plants, Daphnia, Drosophila)
• life history parameters (plants, Daphnia)
• age structure of tree communities (or any other organism that can be aged easily)

SOCIAL BEHAVIOR/MATING

• effects of group size on predation, feeding rate, reproduction (fish, birds, insects)
• rare male mating advantage (Drosophila)

PLANT-ANIMAL, PLANT-MICROBE INTERACTIONS

• insects on plants: gall-makers, leaf miners
• effects of herbivory (actual or artificial) on plants
• distribution of herbivore damage: within, between plants
• herbivory as a function of plant quality & defenses (snails, slugs, insects)
• effects of diet on caterpillar growth
• diet choice by caterpillars
• effects of one species of intertidal organism on another (barnacles on snails, snails on algae, algae on snails)

MUTUALISMS

• fruit and seed dispersal in different habitats; supply fruits or seeds and examine removal rates
• plant-fungal interactions (plant growth in sterilized vs. field collected soil)
• effects of nitrogen-fixing bacteria on competition

COMPETITION

• algae, zooplankton, weedy plants, cultivars (greenhouse/lab)
• plants with different architectures, C3 vs C4
• effects of different nutrients, environmental conditions, predation, or nitrogen-fixing bacteria
• effects of earthworms, nitrogen-fixing bacteria on plant competitors
• effects of different spatial patterns on plant or marine invertebrate competitors
• effects of different temporal planting patterns on plant competitors
• effects of soil differences or rooting depth restrictions on plant competitors
• effects of conditions on zooplankton competitors
• allelopathy

PREDATION/FORAGING BEHAVIOR

• optimal diet choice (mice, birds, salamanders, fish, praying mantids, spiders, squirrels)
• staying time in patches
• effects of camouflage; mimicry; heterogeneous environment; predation risk; refuges
• vary search time, handling time, nutrients vs energy
• birds or squirrels at feeders
• induced defenses in Cladocerans (spined vs. unspined Daphnia)
• effects of bird predation on snails in the intertidal with and without dead barnacle refuges

COMMUNITY ECOLOGY/ ECOSYSTEM ECOLOGY

• effects of pollution, disturbance (e.g., timber cutting) on species diversity
  (plants, diatoms, aquatic organisms)
• comparing rates of succession (algae, mosses, lichens, intertidal organisms on rocks)
• island biogeography (diatoms, marine invert larvae on slides)

 

HOW TO WRITE YOUR INDEPENDENT PROJECT PROPOSAL

The purpose of having you write and present a proposal for your independent project is for us to find out what you plan to do, but also to have you clearly formulate your research problem. This exercise is invaluable for all researchers before they begin. Although you may have your ideas in mind, writing them down will clarify them and direct your research design and often will cause you to think of new ideas or approaches. This can be a creative effort as well.

Start with a paragraph that describes the question your project will attempt to answer. Briefly state why the question is interesting--why do you find it interesting, what pattern caught your attention, or why you chose this question to investigate. Then explicitly state your hypothesis(es) and prediction(s). Remember that your hypothesis is your educated guess about the reason or the mechanism that causes your predicted outcome. State your hypotheses and predictions in the form of "if x, then y" and briefly describe the causes (x) you are assuming in each hypothesis and each prediction (y). Describe all possible alternatives--you needn't pick just one if you have no information allowing you to choose among them. In any event you will have a null hypothesis; state this.

Next, describe how you will test your hypothesis. Include the organism(s), the measurements, the treatments, the controls. State explicitly how you plan to collect your data: the number of samples, how they will be arranged or located, how the data will be gathered, so that we can give you constructive feedback as soon as possible. In doing this, you may well discover that you must limit your original question to a smaller, more specific question to be able to test it, at least in the short time available to you. This is a common problem; we often must limit generality to gain testability. Then suggest which statistical test(s) you will use to analyze your data and why you've chosen that test.

Limit this part of your proposal to no more than 2 double-spaced, typewritten pages (minimum font size: times 12 pt; minimum margins 1"). Be brief but specific. Conciseness indicates that you have clearly thought out your ideas and research design.

You should conduct a preliminary library search on your question (and your species) so you have an idea of what information is available in the ecological literature. Attach a bibliography of potentially useful sources after the text of your proposal.

On a separate page, include a list of equipment and supplies that you will need to do your research. For supplies, note how much of each item you will need. Finally, state where you plan to conduct your research (e.g., greenhouse, coldroom, campus grounds, your backyard). If you plan to do field research on private land, make sure that you have permission.

Your proposal is worth 20 points. I will grade these on the following criteria:

Description of problem or background	4
Statement of hypothesis or question	4
Completeness of research plan	5
Predictions	4
Bibliography	3
Total	20

DOING YOUR RESEARCH

As you actually do your research, you may find that you will have to modify your experimental design or maybe even change your hypothesis. However, remember that rejecting your hypothesis is valid and useful. If you do this, you may want to present a new hypothesis that you feel is more plausible. It would also be valuable to future researchers if you would describe how you would do the study better if you were to do it again.

Before your oral presentation and before you write your project report, please consult Guidelines for Oral Presentations and Guidelines for Scientific Writing.