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Showing posts from May, 2025

Progress Report: RStudio, Data Analysis, and Manuscript Preparation

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  May 30, 2025 The group demonstrated commendable progress in leveraging RStudio and ChatGPT as effective resources for data analysis. Friday's session was particularly productive, allowing for significant advancement in our data work, largely due to Adrian's guidance with RStudio's technical aspects. Marshall's facilitated discussions on various datasets further enhanced our analytical understanding. A key insight gained was the superior accuracy and consistency of Monday's dataset, especially when compared to established data on pipevine butterfly incubation periods, in contrast to Wednesday's dataset. This underscored the critical importance of data validation in our research. Class minutes 5/30 10:00 AM Class began with Adrian providing a concise overview of the day's agenda, including clearly defined expectations and set goals for our work. 10:15 AM-10:50 AM Marshall delivered a presentation discussing various datasets applicable to our classwork, and f...

ABI 198 Section B: Wrapping Up Analysis Week

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       Keep working hard guys as we approach the end of the quarter! Today's class session was focused on individual work, asking questions and wrapping up analysis. “ Not Art and Science serve alone; Patience must in the work be shown .” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Remember to refocus and stay patient as we finish up with analysis week and as coding can be frustrating. Meeting Minutes: 12:10 - Met at Briggs hall 122 12:11 - We wished Cameron a happy birthday (happy birthday Cameron!)  12:10-1:50 Time to ask Marshall and Crystal questions and work on R 1:50 - Class ended  What we did: Students just asked questions and for help on individual analysis. Someone asked Marshall how to read and interpret what R spits out/output and Marshall explained and interpreted the output of one of the students data in front of the class. Marshall also reminded the class about p-values and the 0-0.5 threshold for signific ance. Some don't report the actual value if it...

ABI 198 Section B: R You Ready for Data Analysis?!

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Great job everyone for cleaning up the data and working hard on R today! We're in the final stretch of this class and in writing our manuscript. Meeting minutes (5/28): 10:00 am - Met at Briggs 122 10:10 am - Separate into respective groups Group 1: Continue taking bark samples Group 2: Continue taking acorn samples Group 3: Continue inputting data on Google Sheets Groups 4: Input neighbourhood analysis onto its own Google Sheet 10:50 am - Group discussion 11:15 am - Begin cleaning up data (n/a -> NA; empty -> absent) 12:10 pm - Lunch break (also merged the entire master sheet into one) 12:30 pm - Working on R 1:50 pm - Class ended What we did: We mainly spent half of our time working on data analysis in R. Prior to that, we discussed what we wanted to analyze and what kind of models would work best (ANOVA, linear regression, etc.) We had lots of great questions/ideas! Some people wanted to look at bark density with hole size, cardinal direction vs. number of holes, preferenc...

Section A: Asking butterflies "what that tongue do?"

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Where have we been? After abandoning the flower feeding angle of our project (shout out to all our wonderful fake flower makers!), the gang decided to go all in on proboscis rinses. After probing the pipeline swallowtails on Monday we received wonderful news throughout the week that our samples were growing both yeast and bacteria colonies. Lots of nasty stuff. Hopefully we can parlay this project into a funded venture for butterfly mouthwash. What did we do? The plan for today was to split into a few different groups to catch cabbage whites out at the Davis wetlands, catch pipevines at the arboretum, and to count colonies on our growth plates. Adding cabbage whites gives us another species to look at albeit from a completely different location than our pipevines. Could still be quite cool! Minutes: Perhaps most important was around 10:50 am when Adrian found out he was the blogger for today. Unfortunately, I didn't take too many notes on the schedule for the day. Here's a roug...

Working in the field & with the findings: the gang divides and conquers

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Today was a very productive day for our class in many aspects! Some people went out to Quail Ridge to finish up data collection, marking the official end to our time in the field! A bittersweet landmark.  The rest of the class spent the day in the classroom. Satellite group continued grinding, they are doing a great job! The remaining folk kicked off our adventure with in-house data collection. We got busy taking acorn measurements and obtaining bark density measurements. A couple people were brave enough to take on the beast of combing through our various data sheets and entering them into the master spreadsheet.  Minutes: 12:10pm - 12:20pm: Debrief and break up into groups: acorn analysis, bark density measurements, data entry, and satellite group 12:20 - 1:30 pm: Busy bees! Everybody worked in their respective groups to further our project along 1:30 - 1:40pm: Group Discussion; we went over what we accomplished and what there is left to do for the next class. We still need ...

The End of a Cahill Era ... to be continued Quail Ridge

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We had a successful day of data collection! The Cahill group finished collecting data using the new protocol from all granaries and went to get tacos to celebrate! The Quail Ridge group continued data collection using the new protocol and completed four granaries. Satellite group worked on collecting tree measurements with coordinate clusters. We are officially on track for data analysis this week and will begin next class.  Here are our minutes:  9:00am - Quail Ridge group departed   9:45am - Quail Ridge group arrived at site and began data collection of granaries  10:00am - Cahill group departed/satellite group began tree measurements 10:50am - Cahill group arrived at site and split off in pairs for data collection of granaries  Goal: finish data collection of all Cahill granaries Goal: collect as much data as possible from Quail Ridge granaries Both groups utilized new protocol designed during the previous class  12:00pm - Cahill group regrouped at ...

What is success without any setbacks???

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Today was another troubleshooting day as our experiment isn't going as planned, but there is still time to make a few changes to our experiment. Let's make the best out of the 2.5 weeks left of class together. WE GOT THIS GUYS!!! Also thanks to those who collected butterflies during the weekend.  Before class Sam, Tina, and I defrosted the butterflies in their envelopes so that we didn't lose track of them as they were numbered and labeled by sex.  10:00 am Class began with Tina giving a brief description of the goals for today and with both Marshall and Adrian bringing in more snacks for the class. Big thank you to them for keeping us fueled.  10:05 -11:35 am The microbe group leaves to the lab to work on plating the samples taken from the butterflies caught and started making fungi and bacteria plates for new samples on Friday.  10:20 - 10:40 am The flower group started testing butterfly preference color with blue and yellow flowers in the big enclosure which lea...