In todays class, we focused heavily on coming to an agreement with our methods and aims for our study before our big day on Friday, where we officially start data collection 🤯!! Jennifer had made slides to help organize this process which really directed us to reach conclusions about some of our concerns coming into this class.
10:00- At the start of class not all of us were present >:l We had eleven people present, so we decided to wait a couple of minutes for the missing four people to trickle in. Guys, just a reminder that your participation is based on your attendance as well, so try your best to be on time for all class sessions!
10:02- In the mean time, we split into our groups made by Jennifer to get us in position for the discussion later in the class:
- Marking: Caelen, Aja, Jennifer, Kaya
- Sectioning: Eric, Alan, Arianna, Cristal
- Ovipositing: Jay, Kayla, Jessica, Rosie
- Tracking: Mario, Kendall, Mia, Alejandra
10:04- We officially started Jennifer's presentation!! The goal is to finalize our methods so we can officially start on Friday. She prefaced that we DO NOT have time to be shutting down ideas as time is limited, and the google form she had made us all fill out was made for this purpose. The form boiled down the main issues and interest in our study that we were going to discuss and vote on. Specifically, we planned to tackle "what our aims were", "variables", "data collection", and "methods".
10:08- Jennifer gave a run through about ovipositing, as many people have not heard about this behavior before taking this class. Explaining how the adult male will stay clamped to the female while she is ovipositing to prevent other males from interfering. Bro is really playing defense when the game is over.. We then came to the conclusion as a class, through way of raising hands, that we would track ovipositing as a behavior!
10:10- We voted on how we should be marking our captures and decided... A!!
ID upon capture and write down F/M in our data sheet
Consider male and female behavior only during oviposition behavior
ID upon capture and consider F/M behavior during oviposition
Don’t consider sex as a variable
10:11- Then we began talking about how we should be assessing dryness.. by.....
- PVC pipe or depth stake
- Collecting depth every 2-3 days, same time (so this would mean people would need to volunteer out of class time. At least 2 for safety reasons).
10:20- Now.. we began discussing the age old question. HOW ARE WE GOING TO MARK THE DAMSELFLIES??? We came to the consensus that we would be using roman numerals due to the fact that there are less curves so it does not stress the wings out too much. Rosie suggested that we can mark one side and them flip the damselfly over for easy access to write on another wing, rather than spreading all the wings apart to write on them, potentially harming the damselfly in the process. All the girls in the class, none of the dudes, were going crazy about a new technique we could implement using nail artist brushes that have an extremely fine tip for writing.
10:26- Suggestions about a new numbering system with only colors, where each color represented a digit and we could do a colored dot system for the ones, tens, hundredths place to ID them using dots, very cool.
All of these were realllllyyyy good suggestions.... but fast forward to our discussions and the marking team concluded that we would just be using colored dots for location as well as for sex, no need for individual identification.
10:29- Next, we began talking about the behavior sampling relevant to our project. Kaya noted that getting ovipositing behavioral information was a great idea as the damselflies would be stationary, making observation very straight forward, but other behaviors may be harder to observe due to the fact of how fast damselflies move and relocate.
Mario suggested we could still observe territorial, perching, mating, etc by using an ethogram, where we can more intensely focus on recording accurate behaviors observed as it would only require us to concentrate within a specific area.
10:32- 👀👀👀👀👀
Marshall made his way up to the front of the class and dropped bars:
He announced that we should be more conscious in our wording, stating how some of our responses were a bit critical when sharing, and that this room should be a safe space for all ideas and intellectual risk! He noticed the tendency of our class to interrupt people before they finished thoughts, and stressed how listening is just as critical as offering a response for growth as team. Our success and failure depends on us because we are completely student led. He gave us a helpful phrase to keep in mind,
"Yes and..." which makes it easier to build on ideas rather than feeling the need to present a perfected answer. This course is teaching us about the highly collaborative environment in science that we will see and be a part of over and over again in our careers. If we effectively achieve this, we will create a positive work environment where we all want to be present and active but it will also build better science.
Crystal also mentioned: You also not not have to agree! You can agree to disagree and there is nothing wrong with that. Through trying out methods out in the field is where we come to concrete conclusions. We want this to be fun, effective, while keeping the rigor of science. Individual meetings will be in a ~week, so evaluation of our class standing will be addressed and talks about how the class is functioning for the individual as well!
10:45- Some students volunteered and were willing to go out to the bypass on Tuesdays during class time.
- Jay said she could do Tuesdays
- Kendall said Wednesday and Thursdays
(also if these are wrong just ignore, maybe I heard wrong lol)
WE HAVE A 8 SEATER VAN AT ALL TIMES, AND ANYONE CAN TAKE IT.
SO IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN GOING TO THE BYPASS AND NEED A RIDE, JUST MESSAGE MARSHALL OR CRYSTAL AND IT IS FAIR GAME!!
10:55- We get separated into our groups at this point and tackled our assigned roles to discuss.
11:03- Ovipositing group brought up the issue that many of them saw a disconnect between the behavior sampling and dispersal relationship in our study. They suggesting linking the two by using behavior to explain why they are dispersing... which is a lot easier to understand.
We basically used the rest of the class time to work through our ideas and try and finalize our ideas- Here is the link to the document that we all collaboratively worked on
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EiLKKf9NXPRqotUhYJJJR3GLDgHau3qFcoRBJ9GY8uE/edit?usp=sharing
There is still work to be done, and a ZOOM call is currently being organized for either Wednesday (tomorrow) or Thursday (after tomorrow..). Please join because we need the input of all classmates for this process to proceed smoothly!
ALSO.. Look out for a google forms I will be sending in tasks, it will just basically test our ability to accurately identify damselfly species and sex. There will be a whole bunch of pictures and you have to select the species and sex you think it is. PLEASE try to get 100%, and if not at least be aware of what questions you got wrong!
Thanks y'all! Friday will be AMAZING!!!!!
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