Lab format

Science Laboratory Format

Writers in the field of biology must consider not only the form but the style of writing in biology papers.

As in all fields, there are conventions to follow or typical style formats of the discipline.

Writing in the sciences is concise, yet provides sufficient detail to allow the reader to follow the author’s

argument.

A research article or lab report is also frequently written in first person and in an active voice. For exam-

ple, rather than stating, “Bird songs were collected using…”, it is less cumbersome and more direct to

state, “I collected bird songs using…”. That said, be sure to clarify with your professor, as some prefer

third-person and passive voice.

Components of a Biology Lab Report

The following is a standard and general format.

A research article or lab report in Biology can be recognized by the following components.

Title

The title should incorporate the purpose of the study as well as key words on the topic. For example, if

your purpose was to offer an assessment or a comparison, these words might appear in the title. If the

object of study was a particular species or experiment, these objects would appear in the title.

Abstract

You should provide a very brief summary of the entire document. The main idea from each section of the

paper should be included. Using a sentence or two, you should highlight each of the following:

o rationale/importance;

o objectives/hypotheses;

o how the study was conducted (methodology);

o main findings;

o conclusions.

Introduction

You should draw on relevant published work to provide the following:

o Background to justify your objectives, hypotheses, and predictions;

o Statements of your objectives, hypotheses and predictions;

o An explanation of why your study is important in the field.

Methods

You should provide enough detail such that the reader could duplicate the methods of your study. You

should address several key questions:

o Where was the study performed?

o When was the study performed?

o On what organism/structure was the study performed?

o What instruments were used in the study?

o What was the experimental design?

o What variables were measured? (A variable refers to any biological feature that may be manipulated

or observed. For example, arm length, eye colour and singing rate are all variables.)

o What controls were used? (In experimental design, when manipulating a variable to test for a re-

sponse, a control must also be performed where no manipulations are made. Data obtained from controls

allow us to determine whether the results we obtained through manipulation were due to the experiment

or some other factor.)

o What statistics were used to analyze your data?

Use figures, flow-charts and tables to help illustrate locations and complicated experimental designs. Re-

fer to these illustrative tools within the text.

Example: "I studied the mating behaviour of song sparrows on Vancouver Island, British Columbia (Figure

1)”.

Results

You should summarize the measurements you obtained in your study. Typically you should not provide

the raw data, but instead present trends and statistics from your analyses (i.e., means, variance, p-val-

ues). Example: Male birds sing at a higher rate in June (mean 10.8±1.5 calls/min) than in July (mean

4.3±1.2 calls/min; χ2 = 1.5, p < 0.05).

Be sure to include figures and tables to illustrate major findings. Also be sure to refer to figures and ta-

bles within the text.

DO NOT INTERPRET RESULTS. Leave this for the discussion.

Discussion

You should discuss what your results mean with respect to your hypotheses and the field of interest.

Consider the following questions:

o Do your results support your hypotheses?

o What are possible causes of the observed patterns?

o Are there alternative explanations for the observed patterns?

o How do your results compare to other studies?

o What were some of the limitations of your study?

o What are the implications of your study?

SUPPORT YOUR WORK WITH RELIABLE SOURCES

Literature Cited

You should provide the complete references for all sources cited in your paper. Unlike other disciplines that strictly follow prescribed formats such as MLA or APA, the exact format of references in Biology is commonly The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers: Scientific Style and Format. Therefore, instructors will often indicate which writing style you should use in your own paper or report.