Cahill Property 2: Electric Boogaloo

We had another good day today looking into our four different potential research questions.  Here's our minutes:

Time

Activity

Duration

10:00 AM

Meet at Mann Lab

-

10:40 AM

Drive out to Cahill

40m

10:50 AM

Split off into our four groups and go observe

130m

1:00 PM

Met back near the vans to briefly discuss what was found

10m

1:10 PM

Drive back to UC Davis

40m

1:50 PM

Dismissed

-

Since we all split off, here’s some highlights of each group’s adventure:

Woodpecker & Quail group

They hiked up a steep slope to look at some of the more remote areas that burned in the Hennessey Fire to see if they could find any signs of woodpeckers. They found a few cavities and two seed banks! The quail group followed along and counted quail as we inspected some of the high severity fire areas.


Nuttall's woodpecker at the seed bank

Woodpecker cavity (left), Seed bank (right)

California Quail

The quail group thought the seed banks were really interesting so we're going to be turning our focus more towards that given it might be easier to study (stationary site) and may have a wide range of biodiversity we could explore.

Ants & Swallowtail Group
They looked at some ants in some oak trees to see if they cooperate or compete in different environments. They collected a few ants to observe and also caught this beautiful swallowtail while out!  They also collected a beetle for further study.

Swallowtail (left) Wolf Spider (right)

The group on the trail

Great job today everyone, I understand the process for coming up with a novel and noteworthy idea can take longer than expected and can be frustrating, but as Marshall noted in his presentation on the first day, doing science is often not a linear process.

This process has helped refined and reveal interests that we did not know were lying beneath our initial questions. I feel that each time we go to a field site we find something noteworthy enough that not only helps us dig deeper, but also to consider other factors we hadn't previously.


We’ve gone back and revised, redrawn, rewrote, re-researched, and re-thought on a lot of the ideas we had going into this process.  While it can been tiresome, I think we did end up with some pretty interesting threads to tug on from today’s activities. Once we pick our project on Friday, I think a plan of action will crystalize very quickly and should be somewhat easier to action on compared to this initial ideation process! Thanks again to everyone for their hard work this past month.


For Our Next Class

I've already put the message out on slack, but to reiterate, this is my expectation for class:

  • If you haven't already "joined" a group, please do so tonight.
  • All 4 groups will present their ideas in a roughly 5-10 minute presentation at the start of class on Friday (5-10 slides). We'll then vote, and use the remainder of the time working on our project.

Things to address in your presentation:

  • Short, specific research question (1-3 sentences).
    • One example: "Lion hunting behaviour was studied in two regions of Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda. Six environmental, three prey-related and two lion-related factors were evaluated for their influence on hunting success."
      • This is more fleshed out than ours will be, but that's the framework at least.
  • Some background enough to understand the idea
  • How would we collect the data (Doesn't have to be perfect, just a feasible idea in the time we're working in)
  • Why should we care (impact)

Additional Notes:

  • Each person in each group should present at least one slide
  • When you aren't presenting, please take notes on the other presentations and ask some questions at the end.
This should likely take around 2-3 hours to cobble up before class time on Friday, be ready to meet up in person or virtually to get this done.

Don't forget to finish our R homework by Friday night!

Agenda for Friday (Briggs Hall):
12:00 - Seed bank group project presentation
12:10 - Questions
12:13 - Ant group project presentation
12:23 - Questions
12:26 - Woodpecker group project presentation
12:36 - Questions
12:39 - Swallowtail group project presentation
12:49 - Questions

12:52 - Short break to gather thoughts

12:55 - Vote and select a project


Remainder of class time until 2 PM will be used to get everyone up to speed on the project idea, find research and share in Zotero, and start creating a plan of action for Monday.

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