Principles of Ecology Paper

Principles of Ecology

GROUP PROJECTS

The project in this class is worth 100 of your 600 total points.

1. Choose 1 of the posted sentinel articles posted on Blackboard – make sure it is a consensus of the group.

2. Each person in the group read the article carefully.

3. Each person in the group find a peer-reviewed article that supports, expands, or is closely related to, the concepts in the sentinel paper. Each person MUST choose a different manuscript.

4. Working together write a summary of the sentinel paper and each of your supporting papers from each student. Each student should be able to summarize what part of the sentinel paper his/her paper supports or expands upon.

5. As a group construct a paper summarizing the sentinel paper and each supporting paper from the students.

6. If there are 7 people in your group, then there should be at least 8 peer-reviewed manuscripts in the citations. 1 is the sentinel paper and each of the other papers that you have chosen.

This should not be a difficult paper but I want attention to detail. Be sure you know how to use citations and the Literature cited section must be correctly cited. Also, please include your name in parenthesis after your citations. Example:

Ambrose, H.W. 1972. Effect of habitat familiarity and toe clipping on rate of owl predation in Microtus pennsylvanicus. J. Mammal. 53:909-912. (J. Bouldin)

Write in 3rd person….. Do NOT plagiarize – this will get you a 0 on your paper – University policy!!!

Below are the sections you should have and the correct way to use citations.

Title The title of a scientific paper should tell the reader what kind of work is being reported. If possible, it should reveal the organism or system studied, the particular aspect or system examined, and the variable(s) manipulated. Examples:

A Review In Support of the River Continuum Concept

Expanding the Concept of Rive Continuum with Additional Literature

Introduction The introduction should present the question being asked (refer to your title) and place it in the context of what is already known about the topic. This could be a quick review of the concepts in your sentinel paper. The final sentences may describe your question being asked and how the study addresses the question. Be sure you cite your original paper that you are describing.

Supporting Literature This is the section that each student can write a few paragraphs on his/her paper that they have chosen to support or contrast or expound on the original paper. Be sure and use citations correctly. You could even use additional citations that are found in the paper that you have individually chosen. Again be sure NOT to plagiarize.

Try to transition into the next student’s paragraph when you put this together.

Conclusion Work together to bring all these papers together. Do they all support what the sentinel paper has said? Do some support and some contrast the paper? Bring it all together here. If a reader is in a hurry and doesn’t want to read the whole paper you are writing, he might skip to the conclusion to see if he wants to read the rest. So bring it all together here and do not forget to use citations here!!

Literature Cited All published work mentioned in your paper must be listed in this section. List your citations in order of the last name of the first author. In cases of more than two authors, use "et al." in the text of your paper (Jones et al., 1972), but in the literature cited section, all authors must be named. Some examples:

Ambrose, H.W. 1972. Effect of habitat familiarity and toe clipping on rate of owl predation in Microtus pennsylvanicus. J. Mammal. 53:909-912.

Clingenpeel, J. A., and B. G. Cochran. 1992. Using physical, chemical, and biological indicators to assess water quality on the Ouachita National Forest utilizing basin area stream survey methods. Proceedings Arkansas Academy of Science 46:33-35.

If you are unsure how to cite something, begin by reviewing how the papers you are using have cited their references. There are also internet sources and books with examples of proper citations. Just be consistent!!! You will see that many journals cite in different ways, so whatever format you use is fine, just use it with all your citations.

Single author: Arkansas, in 1992 alone, applied over 0.7 million kg of propanil (Smith 2004).

Smith (2004) found that in Arkansas over 0.7 million kg of propanil had been applied in one single year.

Two authors: Rohm and Haas (1991) reported a Daphnia magna 48-hr LC50 of 0.19 mg/L using reagent-grade propanil.

Propanil (3',4'-dichloropropionanilide) is one of the world's most widely used rice herbicides, and it is extensively used in Arkansas, the leading rice producer in the United States (Webster and Gunnell 1992).

Three or more authors: Moore et al. (2008) discussed the utility of reporting both point estimates (LC50s) and exposure-response slopes (potency estimations).

Point estimates (LC50) were calculated using either Probit or Trimmed Spearman-Karber analyses (Hamilton et al. 2007).

More than one literature citation within a sentence: (earliest to most recent) On average, the United States has applied approximately 5 kg/ha/year to about 70-100% of rice hectare acreage for the past two decades (US EPA 2001; Schlenk and Moore 2005).

Things NOT to do… 1. Don’t use quotes within the text of your report, paraphrase instead. 2. Don’t write "(see Smith et al., 2009)" instead just refer to the table or figure at the end of the sentence by (Smith et al., 2009). 3. Do not write in 1st person 4. Most importantly, do not plagiarize.