LS2014 Zoology, Spring 2011 Winslow
Guidelines and
helpful hints for writing research report on waterfowl census
This paper is due on 11 March at http://turnitin.com and is worth 50 points. It might be 5 or 10 pages long, including tables and figures and references.
The objective of this exercise is to determine how lakes of different sizes vary in the composition of waterfowl (ducks and geese) communities, drawing from published literature and your own field observations. You will write the paper in the format of a scientific research report.
A scientific research report typically includes a title page, an abstract, an introduction, a methods section, a results section, a discussion section, and a reference section. The best way to learn about this structure is to read papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, which you will want to do anyway to research your topic.
The Title
The title of a scientific paper states the specific question
or topic under study. Oftentimes the study addresses the effect of one factor
on another. In our case the predictor (independent) variable may be lake size
or habitat or level of human disturbance, and the response (dependent)
variable is waterfowl community structure. You may each decide what aspect of
the waterfowl community to analyze. For instance, a student particularly
interested in dabbling ducks (species of ducks that forage in shallow water
near the shore) might write a paper titled Effects of lake size on dabbling
duck diversity during spring migration in central
The Abstract
The abstract concisely summarizes everything in the main body of the paper. It may be easiest to write this section last. You should be able to decompose an abstract to find sentences corresponding to the introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections. You may read many published abstracts in the course of looking for appropriate sources for your paper. Often abstracts are available for free online, but the full-length paper may be more difficult to obtain.
The Introduction
The introduction section gives background information for
the topic, citing relevant literature. It should also state the objectives for
the study and any questions that are being addressed. You should do a
literature review for the introduction. Look for some general sources that will
give you basic information on the natural history of the species you are studying.
Also find some relevant articles from peer-reviewed journals. For instance,
Leslie and coworkers (1994) censused dabbling and diving ducks on
For general sources, look for books on the natural history of birds in the St. Gregory's University library. You can search the database at: http://intranet.stgregorys.edu/places/Library/default.htm (choose "SOULS at SGU" in the "Catalogs" menu). For peer-reviewed journals, choose "EBSCOHOST" under "E-Resources". Try searching for articles using the name (common and/or scientific) of the species you are studying.
If you are not able to get the full text of an article through EBSCOHost, try some of the links at http://intranet.stgregorys.edu/people/faculty/dewinslow/ (click on "Links for finding journal articles"). These links will take you to databases where you can search for the article and maybe find the full text if it is available. If you are not able to obtain an article you need, ask me for help or ask Anita Semtner in the library (but don't wait until the last minute!). You are also welcome to peruse the books and journals on my bookshelf.
Please refer to the class syllabus to be sure you understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. In general you should write in your own words, paraphrasing the findings of the authors you cite. If you do include a quote by another author, be sure to enclose it in quotation marks or indent it to indicate it is a quote. Be sure to give the full reference for any quoted passages.
The last paragraph of the introduction should state the
objectives of the study. Clearly phrase any questions you are attempting to
answer. You may want to state a hypothesis to be tested here. For instance, we
might expect that diving ducks (which catch fish in deep water) would be a more
important component of a waterfowl community at a large lake than at a small
lake without much deep water. Although our intention was to study the ducks and
geese, some of you may want to address questions about American Coots (Fulica
The Methods section
After the introduction to a scientific paper is a section titled "Methods" or "Methods and Materials". This section describes what the investigators did in sufficient detail that another researcher in the same field could replicate it. So describe where you went, what you did, what sort of observations you made. Keep in mind that the methods you used should be relevant to the questions posed in the Introduction. With field studies, there is often a map included as the first figure. You may be able to find a map of our sites from Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/) or another source. Be sure to cite the source of any images you use.
Most scientific papers include several figures and tables. The authors refer to these figures and tables by number in the text as the information is discussed. Each figure or table has a caption which describes in a few sentences the information contained. Look at some examples in published papers or in your textbooks to see how this is done. A table will have headings for each column and possibly footnotes.
The Results section
After the Methods section is a section titled "Results". The text of the Results section describes the findings from the study, often using summary statistics and inferential statistics to analyze the data. Describe the patterns you see in the numbers and how they relate to the questions posed in the Introduction. In addition to describing findings in the text of the Results section, data are presented in tables and figures. You will probably want to include a table listing the total number of individual birds of each species observed at each lake. Most of the figures in a scientific paper tend to be graphs, showing relationships among variables measured. A bar graph showing numbers of individuals of a given species at the various lakes might be illustrative.
The Discussion section
The Discussion section ties everything together, answering the questions posed in the Introduction. While the Results section objectively states the facts, the Discussion section uses inference to draw conclusions about the phenomena under study. Oftentimes this involves generalizing from the specific sample studied to a larger population of interest, or from specific mechanisms to more general processes. The Discussion also should consider the limitations of the study in addressing the questions of interest, compare findings with those of other similar studies, and make suggestions for future research directions. The Discussion section is also the appropriate place to make recommendations for policy. For instance, you may have suggestions for management of wildlife or other natural resources.
The Reference section
The Bibliography should include all references cited in the text and in the captions of tables and figures. No other references should be included. A book citation should include the authors or editors, year published, title, publishing company, and the city where it was published. A citation of a journal article should include the authors, year published, title of the paper, title of the journal, volume number, and page numbers. For sources accessed from the internet, include the authors, year published, date accessed by you, title, the name of the institution sponsoring the website, and the web address (uniform resource locator). Look in published papers for examples of how to list other types of documents.
Literature cited
Elmberg, J.; P. Nummi; H. Poysa; and K. Sjoberg. 1994. Relationships between species number, lake size and resource diversity in assemblages of breeding waterfowl. J. Biogeog. 21:75-84.
Leslie, David M., Jr.;