Damselflies in distress: Who's distressing us? Rstudio...

ABI Section 2- Week 8 Tuesday Session  

May 19th, 2026. 

Hello, hello! This is Moth Lady, finally clocking in for her Blogger and (in a couple days) MC shift. 

Today marks our 8th week of working on this project! Kayla was our MC of the day, and she had a lot planned for us today.

10:02, Discussion of last weeks field session:  

Kayla asked if anyone had notes or room for improvement. At this point we’ve established our project and are quite far into it, so there wasn’t a lot of discussion to be had here. Regardless, a few important things did come up” 

• Aja noted that Marshall Alan and Crystal noticed the vivid dancers mating and the females ovipositing on Friday. On that note, Kaya said she saw two damselflies mating— unknown + male fork tail. So, our unknown damselflies might have been… female forktails! 

• Jessica and Mario reiterated some identification tips for sexing Pacific forktails. 

Rosie did a great a job organizing last week— THANK YOU ROSIE! 

Finally, Alejandra noted that it may be helpful to increase the number of nets. Kayla then nudged us on to our next topic, the final paper. 

10:06: The Final Paper 

Kayla made sure to reassure everyone that they don’t need to stress, and that we still have time! About two and a half weeks, to be specific. Kayla then told us to think about ideas, questions, analysis, etc. We can start our methods right now, thanks to the finalized methodology document that was completed last week. Thank you Caelan, Mario, Kendall and Kaya! And an extra big thank you to Mario, for doing some of the analysis already and sharing with the whole class! 

Kayla then noted that we should start writing our paper now, especially the sections for which we already have all the needed information. She stressed the importance of time management, and noted the example papers available to us, as well as Zortero as another resource. Then, the R tutorial with Marshall began. 

10:08: Marshall R tutorial! 

Marshall went over a lot of the basic steps for us, which included: 

1. How to load your Data? 

He then noted that a lot of working with R in research is, simply put, “Going from what you have to something which can be used in a paper”. He organized everything in a list of steps he finds helpful! Some of the most useful points from there on included” 

• Cleaning and manipulating the data! This will depend on what you are interested in. 

• Derived statistics to compute time windows, steps, etc 

• Define variables as a few predictor or response categories to answer questions. Is our variable the response or predictor, and how do we decide that? 

• We need to know what kind of data is each of those data classified as? For example, continuous or categorical? 

• You should be able to fit these data into the question, and then use the correct math to analyze it. 

• How do we make plots to visualize our data? 

All in all, Marshall really emphasized that the statistics we each need to do will depend heavily on the data each person chooses to use, and how. So everyone should start to think about that now! He also gave us a more indepth R tutorial to provide us an example of all of this, specifically looking at the sex ratio of our damselflies within their subsections.

At 10:42, Marshall put together a table of our variables, and where they fit in terms of “predictor” and “response”. He also informed the class that we would likely run a lot more statistics than we actually use, and that we should sit with our results for a few days instead of rushing the stats the night before the paper. Luckily, there’s at least ten days between the end of week 9, when we are definitively done with data collection, and the due date of our paper. Don’t waste it, guys! 

At almost 11am, Kayla took back the reins and had the class discuss how we would like to interpret our data: 

At 11:16, Kayla reined everyone back in so that everyone could share with the class! 

Kendall wants to look at population size correlated with weather, while Mario wants to facet the data so weather calls in columns. Kaya wants to set up a recapture spread sheet to look for patterns in survivorship, and other recapture based information. Jay and Jessica are interested in looking at sex ratios and combining the information with population size, vegetation, and section differences. They were also curious about doing further vegetation surveys, as well as whether or not we had the species ID for common plants in each plot. Caelan is also really interested in weather, and has been working hard to bring in that data from external sources. Mario already has the code for the analysis Caelan wants, and plans to send everyone the code! Thank you Mario  :))) 

Eric brought up the unknown species, wondering if we were able to identify them. We are definitely leaning to them being female forktails! He also noted observing a Vivid dancer male mating with a Pacific Forktail, but after some discussion we decided that it was likely a particularly odd interaction. 

Mia brought up a fantastic point, which is that the damselflies hide when it’s windy. It helps a lot to disturb the vegetation.  

That concludes our session; Alan and a few other students will also be working on ImageJ with our vegetation data. Thanks guys!

To do by next Friday: 

• Please look at your team and subsection assignments. The expectation is that we will hit the ground at the bypass knowing exactly what we need to do! When we arrive at the bypass, please stand next to your fieldwork partner and form a circle so that I can hand you the correct markers quickly and effectively. Crystal and Marshall, you're either on standby to fill in for people if they start feeling really tired, or doing some final vegetation things. Still working that out.

• If you feel unwell, report it to be over discord ASAP 

• If you are able to do any out of class fieldwork, please try and communicate so coordination can occur sooner than later, so we can notify Crystal far enough in advance. This should apply not only for this week, but for next week as well… 

• BRING WATER! BRING FOOD! WEAR SUNSCREEN! It’s not 97 degrees, but it’s still hot. You need to take care of yourselves. If you get a sunburn because you wore no sunscreen, or if you get sick and keep working even though I told you to notify me right away, you get Jay’s pin of SHAME. I think I’m generally a nice enough person, or I’m at least quiet.  I’m telling you right now that you do not want to see a Jay who is mad at you for not taking care of yourself. To contextualize how serious this offense is, the only other way to get this pin of shame is to call a moth a butterfly. Or insinuate that butterflies are better than moths.

Here is our updated schedule, with the mini breaks adjusted back to our usual ten minutes: 

10:40 - 11:00 data collection interval one 

11:00 - 11:10 water break + temp check 

11:10 - 11:30 data collection interval 2 

11:30 - 12:10 Lunch + temperature check; if conditions look hazardous, leave (can go earlier if needed) 

12:10- 12:30: data collection interval 3 

12:30-12:40: Water break + temp check (will ping everyone on discord) 

12:40-1:00 Data collection interval 4 

1:00-1:50: break + temp check

1:50-2:10: Data collection interval 5 

2:10-2:20: break + temp check 

2:20-2:40: Data collection interval 6 

2:40-2:45: regroup + go over plans for the next Tuesday with the MC

As you can see this saves us about 15 minutes compared to when we typically are done. That’s not enough to squeeze another interval + break, so… you’re all free to go! However I didn’t get Yoloberry last week like I wanted, so I'm considering going this week. You can join me if you want!