ABI 150 Section B — Analysis Brainstorming & R Troubleshooting Day

Today’s class focused heavily on data analysis, troubleshooting in R, refining ideas for our final scientific papers and collectively trying to survive RStudio 😭. The overall vibe of the day was collaborative problem-solving: figuring out what our data can actually tell us, helping each other defeat the ancient evil known as error messages, and narrowing down research questions into analyses we can realistically complete.

Starting the Day ☀️

Mario went straight to business as we started right at 10:00 AM he began by thanking everyone who went to the Yolo Bypass yesterday on Memorial Day to collect extra data for the class 🫡

Shoutout to everyone who spent part of their holiday doing fieldwork instead of relaxing.

Mario then checked in with everyone about how we were doing in R.

The emotional state of the class could probably be summarized as: “Define doing.” 😭

He walked us through useful R jargon, functions, troubleshooting strategies, and plotting basics.

Honestly, very much needed. Several lives were saved today. 

A major takeaway from Mario:

Figure out your biological question FIRST before trying to force R to magically produce answers.(Important because sometimes we open RStudio and immediately lose all higher brain function🧠)

Marshall Saves the Dataset 🧹💾

At 10:03, Marshall took us through dataset merging and cleaning.

He uploaded the R codes to the Google Drive and explained how to merge:

1. captures

2. vegetation

3. weather

4. sections

Marshall also showed us codes that clean up and fix typos and accidental extra spaces hiding inside the data like little gremlins causing chaos behind the scenes 👹

This was genuinely super helpful because many of our “R problems” were actually:

• Commas

• Spaces

• Capitalization

• or invisible formatting issues plotting against us

Marshall’s best advice of the day:

“If you get an error, rerun your lines one at a time.”

R users everywhere:

write that down, write that down!! ✍️

Marshall wrapped up around 10:36 after successfully reducing class-wide stress levels 

Group Discussions Begin 🧠

At 10:43, we split into groups to discuss predictors, possible analyses, and paper ideas.

Group 1

• Caelan

• Alan

• Ale

• Mia

• Jessica

Group 2

• Jennifer

• Kayla

• Arianna

• Aja

• Kaya

Group 3

• Eric

• Kendall

• Rosie

• Jay

• Cristal

(Every group today was fighting their own unique battle against R.)

Research Ideas & Group Highlights 🔬

At 11:18, groups started sharing what they had discovered.

Group 1 — Species, Sex Ratios, & Timing ⏰

• Shoutout to Caelan for figuring out time correlation with species vs plot 

Some interesting patterns:

• Pacific Forktails appeared earlier

• Dancers showed up later

• Certain plots were dominated by one species or one sex

Key observations included:

• Female vivid dancers

• Male forktails dominating at certain times

• Possible timing relationships between species activity and location.

Group 2 — Dispersal Analysis 🚶➡️

Jennifer focused on dispersal and movement between sections.

Findings included:

• 11 individuals moved sections

• 42 stayed put.

The group also discussed:

• Dispersal matrices, movement patterns and understanding group coding.

Group 3 — Population Size & Water Variables 🌊

Cristal and Kendall focused on:

• Population estimates

• Recaptures

• Subsection filtering

• Habitat variables.

The group discussed how water distribution might influence populations:

• BG and BB had little/no water,

• RG and RB had wetland influence,

• RY and RR were surrounded by water.

There was also discussion about checking satellite imagery to better understand habitat structure.

Shared R Struggles 😭💻

One of the funniest parts of class was realizing literally everyone is fighting for their life in R.

Top complaints included:

• “What does this error even mean?”

• Object memory issues

• Variables disappearing

Mario reminded us:

• Solve one problem at a time

• Isolate the error

• Avoid trying to fix 14 things simultaneously.

We Officially Broke the Capture Goal 🔥

Mario shared some HUGE class stats:

OVER 1000 CAPTURES 🤯

Our original proposal only called for: 480 captures

At this point the dragonflies are probably developing rumors about us.

Mario also shared the current Top 6 Catchers leaderboard:

🥉 #6 Jennifer — 143 captures

• 56 caught last Friday alone 😭

🥉 #5 Arianna — 144 captures

• 52 caught last Friday 👏

🥉 #4 Mario — 168 captures

• Running the lecture and the leaderboard

🥈 #3 Aja — 169 captures

• 56 caught last Friday

• Allegedly “doesn’t like bugs” ???

• Suspiciously good at catching them 🧐

🥈 #2 Kendall — 177 captures

• 91 in Red despite never collecting in RB somehow???

• Built different honestly

👑 #1 Jay — 196 captures

• 23.45% of ALL captures 😭

• Almost 200!!?

• At this point Jay IS the mark-recapture method

Group Photo 📸

At 11:37, we ended the class with a group photo!

Looking Ahead — Friday Workshop 🚨📊
Friday | 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM

Friday’s session is basically:

“Bring your questions, your figures, your partially functioning code, and your remaining sanity.”

The goal is to help everyone make major progress toward final papers before our last class on Tuesday.

This will be:

    - Workshop time

    - Troubleshooting time

    - Paper development time and hopefully fewer-error-message time

Friday Schedule 🗓️

10:00 – 10:20

Opening, organization, and goal setting

10:20 – 11:10

Work Block #1 — Analysis Support & Troubleshooting

11:10 – 11:20

Snack / Water / Stretch Break 🍎💧

11:20 – 11:40

Collaborative Check-In

11:40 – 12:00

Work Block #2 — Continued Analysis

12:00 – 1:00

Lunch Break 🍕😌

1:00 – 1:45

Work Block #3 — Paper Development

1:45 – 1:55

Short Break

1:55 – 2:15

Final Major Check-In

2:15 – 2:50

Final Work Block

2:50 – 3:00

Wrap-Up & Next Steps

What to Bring Friday 🎒

Please bring:

• laptop 💻

• charger 🔌

• water 💧

• snacks 🍫

• questions ❓

• unfinished analyses 📊

• emotional resilience 😭