ABI 150 Section B -- Fine-tuning our approach

 

Hi from Rosie!

Thank you Alejandra for being yesterday's MC.

On Monday, Mario, Kendall, Jennifer, Arianna, Jay, and Cristal did some out-of-class surveying. Cristal summarized their trip:

Main Focus: Bring BR (3 sessions) and BB (5 sessions) up to 6 sections

Total duration of Field time: arrival at ~4:45, departure at ~5:40

Cristal and Arianna - marked flags (marked subsection w/ appropriate colors)

Jay and Jennifer - marked subsection BR

Maria and Kendall - marked BB

Alejandra requested for out-of-class surveyors to upload and transfer their data within 48 hours, or to ask someone if unable. 

We covered changes in our materials for Friday, namely:

• no longer requiring boots
• no longer bringing walkies
• apparently this is the second time we have made this decision LOL
• forceps incoming - should be in use upcoming Fri
• will need a short demo on how to effectively handle them
• new 5 gallon jug for water bottle refilling

What went well last week:

• collecting data in 20 min intervals
• vegetation surveying

What didn't:

• yellow flags difficult to see given most surrounding plant life is yellow

We discussed a solution for this - now that the flags are marked by section thanks to our Monday group, we no longer need yellow vs. pink to be our indicator of which area we are in; the flag markings themselves are sufficient. So:

• yellow flags may be replaced by pink flags instead (and remarked) for better visibility

We discussed marking errors, specifically The Incident and how we can work around it.

The Incident

• On Friday, 5 damselflies were mismarked as red-blue when in the red-red section
• 3 of them were our unknown species

How can we cope?

• the marked flags were implemented to hopefully remind ourselves where we are

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DATA?

• thankfully, not all of our data will reference dispersal - so using data as-is for those will be fine
• for analysis that does rely on dispersal, we can digitally remove the incorrect data from that section
• ultimately, we will still need to mention it as an area of uncertainty when writing our papers
• at the end of the day, it is a relatively insignificant error to make, especially since the majority were unknowns that we will not be thoroughly analysing
• also, the sheer quantity of capture data we will have likely "smooths out" things like this

We discussed recapture and added a new column to our data sheet for visual coherency - if the damselfly is a recapture, mark the week color in that column. If it is not a recapture, leave it blank.

We discussed biases and looked at the new tab Alejandra made. Since we want the number of individual 20 min sessions between each section the same, she came up with this to keep track.

We discussed when to complete gathering data and settled on allowing the Tuesday MC for our black week to make that decision. 

Kendall, Mario, Caelan, and Kaya volunteered to help consolidate our various methodology docs into one Master Methodology Manuscript, namely:

• Section Information
• Damselfly Sacred Text
• Blogg: 2nd Methods Day- ABI 150 Section 2 (for vegetation)

Hopefully to be completed by Monday. Many thanks to the four of you!

As I write this, Kendall, Mario, and Caelan have just left to presumably do some more field work. Sayonara...

Alejandra then brought up potential methods of data analysis:

• Survival analysis
• Dispersal kernels
• Mark-recapture population

Then split us up into groups to further discuss avenues of analysis. Man I love saying discuss huh. I will just copy/paste this directly from Alejandra's slides since she did a very good job getting it all down.

Group 1 (Aja, Alan, Alejandra, Arianna)

• Vegetation cover vs number of damselfly  (scatter plot)
• Vegetation cover X
• Damselfly population on Y

Group 2 (Caelan, Cristal, Crystal, Eric)

• # of damselfly vs hour we caught them 
• (example: 1pm- 2pm)
• Possibly bar graph 
• Temp. vs # damselfly
• Check hot, humid, windy
• Scatter plot?
• Species vs permanent/ semi-permanent
• Distribution :D
• Checking if Vegetation is null
• Recapture Data is really low (6% of capture are recapture)
• Herbivory could possibly not correlate to the damselfly population data

Group 3 (Jay, Jennifer, Jessica, Mario)

• Bias
• More male dancers caught over female
• Weather vs sex
• Sex vs section
• Things we need to state
• The marks we leave could increase their deaths
• Our presence could affect return rates

Group 4 (Kaya, Kayla, Kendall, Marshall, Rosie)

• Mix and match
• Predictors(x-axis):
• Permanent vs semi
• Species
• Sex
• Subsection
• Herbivory
• Total vegetation
• Perch height week
• Response (y-axis)
• Population size
• Survival
• Could change with sex and species
• Survivorship curves
• Dispersal
• Recaptures
• We could match the predictor to the response variable
• Pick 2 predictors and see how it affects the response

This Friday!

Business as usual. Please come prepared!

• water - extra bottles if necessary
• we will have the 5 gal jug if needed for refills but an extra bottle never hurt
• sunscreen
• brimmed hat
• fan

After arrival, I will give a quick debrief (catching locations for each pair, etc) and have Marshall demo proper use of the forceps. Then release you all upon the world. Please generally stick to this timeframe:

• 20 min catching
• 10 min break
• 20 min catching

Then break for lunch (~45 min), regroup, redisperse, repeat. If at any point you feel too fatigued to stay in the sun, please take care and find somewhere shady and breezy to rest. Your health and wellbeing matters more than the data. 

10:00 - 10:40 Drive to the Yolo Bypass

10:40 - 11:00 Debrief, forceps demo

11:00 - 11:20 20 min catching

11:20 - 11:30 Water break

11:30 - 11:50 20 min catching

11:50 - 1:00 Lunch and regroup

1:00 - 1:20 20 min catching

1:20 - 1:30 Water break

1:30 - 1:50 20 min catching

1:50 - 2:10 Long break
2:10 - 2:30 20 min catching
2:30 - 2:40 Water break
2:40 - 3:00 20 min catching

3:00 - 3:10 Regroup, Kayla announcements, leave