Ecology Lab Report | Lab Reports Biology

Biology 204 – Ecology Lab 1 Spring 2017

Ecology Lab (Biology 204)

Spring 2017

(T 2:30 pm – 5:20 pm ISC 107)

The ecology laboratory is designed to complement the second-year ecology course, Principles of

Ecology (Biology 203). Laboratories will consist of research projects that address questions at

each level of ecological organization, from organisms to populations, communities, and

ecosystems. Emphasis is placed on the types of research questions and designs used by a variety

of sub-disciplines of ecology to expose students to the diverse nature of this field. Students will

be engaged in all aspects of the development of an ecological study: making observations,

formulating hypotheses and predictions, designing experiments and strategies for data collection,

statistical and graphical analysis, interpreting results, and reporting findings in written and oral

formats.

Instructor: Dr. Jennifer L. Apple Office: ISC 258 Phone: 245-5442

e-mail: applej@geneseo.edu Lab: ISC 340

Office hours: MW 10 am – 11:30 am, R 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

(I am also available to meet with students by appointment outside of office hours.)

Course website: canvas.geneseo.edu

Required text: A Field Guide to Eastern Forests by John Kricher (Houghton Mifflin, 1998)

Learning Outcomes

Successful students will be able to:

 make observations, generate hypotheses, and carry out simple experiments and/or collect

field data to answer questions from different sub-disciplines in ecology

 collect, organize, analyze, and present ecological data using appropriate sampling

methods and instrumentation and quantitative statistical and graphical analyses

 explore and evaluate the primary ecological literature to provide background information

for their studies as well as to help put their results into the context of other ecological

research

 communicate their findings using the conventions of scientific writing in reports which

include: 1) an introduction which identifies the context for the work, citing previous

research; 2) a description of methods; 3) results including figures, tables, and statistics;

and 4) a discussion which identifies and explains the key results and their significance

Course Organization

Working in groups of four, students will cooperate to set up and run experiments or make

observations, collect data, and prepare a formal lab report for each of the four projects done over

the course of the semester. Because some projects require more time and steps than others, we

may be engaged in several projects at one time.

Ecology Lab Report, Lab Reports of Biology