It's an R bonanza! DistRessed Damselflies...

Our last long session began with a recap of where we are (we’ve finished data collection!) and where we’re going (rapidly toward a finished paper). The stated goal of the session was to make progress on our individual R analyses. The data present some particular challenges and offer many perspectives from which to analyze.

Students were told beforehand to identify their primary analytical goals for the session. What figures did they want in their paper? What analysis naturally pairs with these figures? And perhaps most difficult, who cares? Our goal is to use our dataset to write an impactful ecology paper… how exactly do we do that?

Arianna reminded everyone of the predictor-response framework and provided a rough structure to the session with scheduled working and break times. A one-hour lunch boosted morale, and a 39-question Kahoot pushed the boundaries of effective team building. Team built!

But all this was lipstick on a damselfly — the main purpose of the session was to make progress on analyses and that’s what we did. As the resident R consultant, I interacted with at least seven or eight individuals, a good portion of the class. It was amazing to see the diversity of questions students were asking:

  • Can damselflies be used as an indicator species?
  • How do aspects of habitat affect the number, species, and sexes of damselflies found in abundance?
  • How large are damselfly populations?
  • How far do damselflies disperse and do they disperse along environmental gradients?

A very diverse set of questions brought up a diverse set of coding issues. Students navigated PCAs, mark-recapture formulae, derived density measures, tricky summary tables, and trickier ggplot calls.

The session wound down gradually with a much-needed lighthearted Kahoot session and a questionably long second Kahoot session. Kahooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot — that’s 39 O’s for 39 questions. We’re all stronger people because of it.

The excitement of competition even delayed the blog post a full 48 hours.

For Tuesday, our Agenda:

  • 10:00 – 10:10: Turn in notebooks
  • 10:10 – 10:20: Closing remarks and end-of-course logistics (papers due 8am June 8)
  • 10:20 – 11:00: R office hours
  • 11:00 – 11:10: Break
  • 11:10 – 11:40: R office hours
  • 11:40 – 11:50: Hand back notebooks
  • 11:50: Tearful goodbyes

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