ABI 150 Section A - Presentation Day

 Presentation day! 

Each group made a presentation for one of the top 4 proposals, discussing changes they’ve made to the original proposals, budgets, and methods for each experiment. 

Proposal 1’s presentation centered around the foraging preferences between greater egrets and snow egrets in the Yolo Bypass Wetlands. With some trail cameras and some crawfish as bait, they planned to observe preferences for food in shallow water, deeper water, out in the open, or hidden. 

Next was proposal 5, focusing on the interactions between larger and smaller wading birds at the Yolo Bypass Wetlands. Focusing more on greater yellowlegs and the black-necked stilt, they wanted to see if proximity to larger wading birds facilitated or interfered with them through an observational study and experimental manipulation. 

Up next was proposal 7, whose study system focused more on the California pipevine swallowtail caterpillars and their host plant Aristolochia californica in Cahill Riparian Reserve. They wanted to see if caterpillar growth was influenced by the trichome density and glucose concentration of the plants they eat. They planned to take 12 caterpillars from the reserve along with leaves and stems from their host plants back to the lab and see how eating only stems or only leaves would impact their growth. 

Last up was proposal 8, also looking at pipevine swallowtail caterpillars, focusing more on their preference for shade or for open sunlight and why. Was their preference fueled by competition and density? They planned to mark sunny and shaded areas in Cahill Riparian Reserve and count the number of pipevine swallowtail caterpillars in each area. They hoped to gain better understanding on how pipevine swallowtails chose the habitats for their area, whether it’s a learned behavior or not. 

The Vote!! 

After presentations, everyone got together and began to discuss, weighing the pros and cons of each proposal. There were two rounds of voting. Round 1, everyone voted for their top two proposals. 

And the winners, a tie for first, proposals 1 and 5! 

More discussions went underway before the final poll went up. Finally, the proposal we would be working on for the rest of the quarter… 

Proposal 5!! 

With the time we had left, we did a literature review. What is there to know about the species interactions with our target birds? What is there that we don’t yet understand? There was much left to do with only so much class time left, so after a brief run through of what we found, everyone’s assignment for the week was to find a research paper relevant to our proposal, add it to the shared zotero, and comment on something interesting in the paper. 

This coming Thursday we’d all be out at the Yolo Bypass Wetlands doing our preliminary observational study. We are all excited to see how this plays out for the rest of the quarter!