2.1 FIELD TECHNIQUES FOR BIOLOGISTS Flashcards
With regards to health and safety, what is the difference between fieldwork and lab work?
There are a wider range of hazards associated with fieldwork than with laboratory work
What is the difference between the risk and the hazard of something?
Risk - how likely it is. Hazard - how harmful it is.
Which potential hazards must be assessed in fieldwork?
Hazards associated with terrain, weather conditions and isolation
What is important when sampling wild organisms?
Sampling technique must be appropriate to species being sampled and minimise impact on species and habitat
Special consideration must be given to?
rare and vulnerable species protected by legislation
Name six techniques for sampling wild organisms.
Transect, point counts, remote detection, quadrat, camera traps, scat sampling
Describe transect sampling.
Sampling carried out at particular intervals along a line or band.
What can transect sampling determine?
Changes in community across an environmental gradient
Describe a point count.
Gathering of observational data from a selected stationary location.
What can a point count determine?
Species abundance
Describe remote detection.
Monitoring subject from a distance with the aid of sensors
When is remote detection useful?
When obtaining data on a global scale or from a difficult to access area
Describe quadrat sampling.
Using a grid to ensure that a standard area is sampled each time a measurement is made.
What are the two requirements of quadrats?
They must be uniform and area of grid must be known.
When are quadrats used?
When sampling sessile and slow-moving organisms
Define sessile.
Fixed in one place - immobile
How are mobile species sampled?
Through capture techniques
How can elusive species be sampled?
Camera traps (direct) or scat sampling (indirect)
What is scat sampling?
Counting droppings
What must sampling be?
Random, stratified and systematic
What is central to biological understanding?
Classification of life
How can a sample/organism be identified?
Using classification guides, biological keys or analysis of DNA or protein
What does familiarity with taxonomic groupings allow?
Predictions and inferences to be made between the biology of an organism and model organisms
What is a model organism?
The best-studied organism within a taxonomic group
What can genetic evidence reveal?
Relatedness between organisms obscured by divergent or convergent evolution
What is divergent evolution?
Evolution of a species into two or more different forms
What is convergent evolution?
Organisms that are not closely related independently evolve similar traits
What are the three domains?
Bacteria, archaea and eukaryota
Name the 5 main divisions of the plant kingdom.
Mosses, liverworts, ferns, conifers, flowering plants
Give a feature of the mosses.
No seeds or vascular tissue
Give a feature of liverworts.
Nonvascular spore-producing plants
Give a feature of ferns.
Vascular system (can grow upwards from soil)
Give a feature of conifers.
Trees with needles or scaly leaves and pinecones
Give a feature of flowering plants.
Flowers (for more successful reproduction)
What is the animal kingdom divided into?
Phyla
Name the 5 main phlya of the animal kingdom.
Chordata, arthropoda, nematoda, platyhelminthes, mollusca
What are chordata?
Vertebrates and sea squirts
What are arthropoda?
Joint-legged invertebrates
What are nematoda?
Round worms
What are platyhelminthes?
Flatworms - have internal organs but no body cavity
What are mollusca?
Diverse phyla, many with shells
How are model organisms used?
They are used to obtain information that can be applied to species that are more difficult to study directly
Give an example of a model bacteria.
E. coli
Give an example of a model flowering plant.
Arabidopsis thaliana
Give an example of a model nematode.
C. elegans
Give an example of a model chordate.
Mice, rats
Why is monitoring populations important?
To assess environmental impact of factors (eg pollutant)
Name a method of estimation population size.
Mark and recapture
What is the mark and recapture formula?
N = MC/R
What does mark and recapture assume?
All individuals have an equal chance of capture and there is no immigration or emigration
Give 5 examples of marking.
Banding, tagging, surgical implantation, painting, hair clipping
What is important to consider when marking?
The method of marking must minimise the impact on the study species
What is an ethogram?
A catalogue of observed animal behaviours/activities in a wild context
What does an ethogram allow?
The construction of time budgets
Name three time measurements.
Latency, frequency and duration
What is latency?
The time between the onset of a stimulus and response
What must be avoided when describing behaviour?
Anthropomorphism
What is anthropomorphism?
Attribution of human motivation, characteristics or behaviour to non-human animals
