2nd Methods Day- ABI 150 Section 2

Field day... I remember it like if it was yesterday, BECAUSE IT WAS! :D 

We started our second method day like any other field day, at the Mann Lab Parking Lot. Our MC for the day was Alan, shout out to him; he's my favorite MC I have blogged for, granted he is the only MC I have blogged for. I also would like to inform everyone that while this is our second Friday gathering data, we did have 2 outside of class data collection on 5/6 & 5/7 ( ⁶–(· ⌣ ˙)_₇).

10:00 am: We gathered all of our materials and loaded up the vans

• 11 nets
• 2 walkie talkies
• extra flags
• PVC pipes for our vegetation quadrant sampling
• So many MARKERS (red, blue, yellow, green, pink, black, white, light blue)

10:05 am: At this time we all hop into our campus vehicles (and personal cars) and drive to the Yolo Bypass.

10:35 am: We have now arrived at the Yolo Bypass and gather around Alan for the morning announcements.

    Alan informed us that we have two goals for the day: one was sampling vegetation and the other was our usual catch and release. For catch an release we were instructed to continue to do what we have been doing which is catching damselflies and recording the species, sex, date of capture, color tagging, etc. Although today we are adding one more dot to the wings which determines the week it was caught. This week we are using 'pink' and this was done so if we were to recapture a damselfly, we would know which week it was caught. 

Alan also implemented the 20min catching intervals where we would catch damselflies in 20 minute intervals and then take a 5-10min break in between before starting to catch again. After he informed us that he needed 5 people sampling vegetation and the rest of the group would do catch and release sampling. Then gave us the run down of how we would be sampling vegetation and the parameters we would be looking at. He decided that we would measure height of the plant, vegetation coverage, and diversity of the plants. Although plans changed a bit and methods were more established later on in this session, so scroll down to see what we did :3.

11:15am: We set off to our to our assigned spots if we were apart of the catch and release group. The vegetation crew, consisting of Marshall, Crystal, Kendall, Mario, and MC Alan, also set off and started in subsection bb. 

    During this time the vegetation crew was figuring out how to record every parameter and eventually they established their methods:

    1. We would place our 1m x 1m PVC squares at each flag to sample vegetation

• skipping the flag that is on the boarder of two plots
• meaning we would have a total of 5 vegetation samples at each subsection
• We have 8 subsections -> 40 vegetation sampling total

    2. Record data:

•  measure the height of the tallest plant (dead or alive) in the the 1m x 1m PVC square in centimeters
• measure the vegetation coverage:
• this is done by taking a photo of the 1m x 1m PVC square and running it through the ImageJ software. Then the software will count the number of pixels that are shades of green which represents the foliage. If there is shades of brown we deem that as having no plant coverage.
• herbivory checking:
• we would randomly select leaves on plants in the 1m x 1m PVC square using the "nose method"
• nose method: a person closes their eyes and points and when they open their eyes, the plant that they are pointing to is the plant that will be observed
• 
• then we would record the percentage of leaves that had holes, leaf degradation, etc. to establish the herbivory.

    3. Repeat for all sections until we reach 40 samples total

12:10 pm: We had a much needed lunch break!

12:50 pm: We gathered around and discussed how our data gathering went and then we switched sides and had a chance to catch and release on the opposite section.

 1:00 pm: We continued sampling and continuing with vegetation gathering until 3pm.

I would like to point out that it was a very hot day and I heard Marshall state to take "water breaks" but I must have misinterpret it somehow because (O-o) the "water broke" my fall when I slipped trying to get a damselfly. Did I catch it? No. Did I get wet? yes. Hopefully next week we have our class boots ready so that we can more comfortably catch them near the water and not get bested by damselflies like I did.

3:00 pm: We all gathered around and discussed about what went wrong and what went well. Overall I deem it a successful session. We did have one complication where we realized we messed up the marking on 3 damselflies but we will discuss on Tuesday what we could do to combat the possible loss in data.

3:10 pm: Left the Yolo Bypass

3:45 pm: Arrived at campus :D!

Things to do before Tuesday, 5/12:

• Input your collection data into the google spreadsheet
• remember don't type directly into "buggin" tab
• Research and find ways that other researchers have analyzed the parameters we have gathered
• example: species dispersal research and tracking distance traveled

Tuesday Tentative Schedule (5/12):

• 10:05 am: Briefly go over the materials we brought during last session and determine whether we need to bring more or less stuff 
• 10:10 am: Briefly discussed what went well and possible mistakes
• 10:20 am: Discuss how we will address the marking errors and what we could do to limit any future errors
• 10:40 am: Assign/have volunteers to work on methodologies on one document (should include: catch and release, sectioning off, and vegetation sampling)
• 10: 48am: Use the rest of the class time to look at the data we already have and discussing as a class how we would use them for data analysis
• we should look at any trends
• discuss any analyze methods used by other researchers
• solidify what parameters we will use and how we will analyze them
• 11:40am: Rosie Time!!! 🐦
• 11:50am: End of Class :)