Thesis Specific Flashcards
Why did you choose to measure residency? What does residency tell us?
For the fish chapter using home range analysis to determine space use doesn’t makes sense as wetlands would only be part of each species’ home range and I’m not deploying an array throughout their entire range since i’m looking at fine-scale habitat use and because of the limitations presented by the Jock.
I chose it for both chapters though so that I could see how much time my study species are spending there overall as this will help indicate how important these created wetlands are to them.
For both chapters I chose the index that includes total monitoring days rather time between first and last detection as this is the more conservative of the two methods and I don’t want to overestimate how much my species use the wetlands.
Why did you choose to measure home range analysis/kernel density? What does it tell us?
Kernel density tells us the probability of finding the animal in a given location and the amount of time it spends there. These densities can be analyzed to determine home range.
Chose because if they are not using the wetlands, I want to see where they’re going and why.
Why Likert scales for survey?
Why thematic portion?
More standardized.
Make it easier for respondent to answer questions and therefore makes it more likely they’ll answer honestly and will answer at all.
The thematic portion is both to triangulate and to capture anything that I may not of thought of in my survey development.
Why abundance and diversity for chapter 3?
Abundance gives important insight on productivity of an ecosystem.
Biodiversity can give insight on the health of the system.
Why did I choose the sample sizes I did?
Ideally you choose a sample size that gives you a big enough statistical power to see any effects in what your analyzing and you know your population size to be able to do this. Though there are also various generic sample size formulas you could use that don’t involve population size and use z-score, desired confidence level and margin of error, and estimated standard deviation instead.
Unfortunately I do not know the population sizes for my study species.
Reading the AFS fisheries techniques book I learned that the minimum sample sizes for most species tend to be 10-20 fish. For the acoustic telemetry study I’m looking at 4 species of fish though and want to look at the differences between species so this would mean I need 10-20 of each species but we had enough funding to do a bit more and I should end up with about roughly 35 of each.
For the snapping turtles I looked at previous studies that evaluated snapping turtle habitat use to guide me on sample size and most used 10 to 15 turtles which is what I stated in my proposal. However, after giving it more thought, part of my study is to identify the differences between the sexes so this should be 10 to 15 turtles of each sex for a total of 20 to 30 turtles. But given this species is special concern I want to sample as few turtles as possible I’m thinking 20 turtles total: 10 males and 10 females.
For the fish abundance survey I felt sampling monthly would be best as my focus is seasonal differences and because a month would give enough time for the inverts to make use of the hester dendys.
For the social study I estimated the population size using ottawa demographic statistics and used a sample calculator with a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 5% to get the sample size of 384.
Why use biologgers?
The biologgers I’ll be using will measure temperature, depth, and acceleration.
With these I’m hoping to collect additional details on habitat use but also hope to be able to identify specific behaviours.
A lot of papers I read use waveforms collected from accelerometers to determine specific behaviours (e.g., swimming, resting, etc.) which I’m hoping to do as well.
And I’d like to try to validate these behaviours when I’m doing the manual radio tracking.
This way I can compare specific behaviours to habitat use.
Why did you choose to use acoustic telemetry for the fish study and radio telemetry for the turtle study?
Radio telemetry for turtles since they are both terrestrial and aquatic and acoustic telemetry cannot be used on land. Also because I want to manually track them.
Acoustic telemetry for fish study to be able to expand on previous study in the jock river whose muskie I’m including in my study. Also, it will enable me to get finer-scale habitat use data using my gated array for residency than radio would.
Why use hester dendy invertebrate samplers?
What are their advantages and limitations?
Because I’d like to take samples during the winter, any methods by hand such as using quadrats are eliminated.
They have also often been shown to be very effective in measuring relative abundance between study sites over time.
Like any sampling method they may not capture all species since different species may colonize at different rates or not at all.
(Haag et al, 2012)
Why use underwater photography?
What are some of its advantages and disadvantages?
Limited options for sampling during winter and it shows promise for studying this season.
Also, less intrusive and allows us to see behaviour.
Turbidity and low light may impact image quality
What novel FUNDAMENTAL information will my thesis contribute to science?
Predator-prey interactions
Resource/niche partitioning.
Species diversity, richness, and evenness in the commnity - of fishes.
Insight into thermal and dissolved oxygen tolerances.
Behaviours of study species.
What is my overall thesis?
The focus of my thesis research will be to evaluate whether created wetlands provide high quality habitat for freshwater biota in heavily urbanized river systems.
The main research question I will answer is whether various habitat variables within the study ponds are of sufficient quality that would allow their use by freshwater biota and whether freshwater biota do use them (i.e., whether the habitat is functional).
What are your study species doing right now?
Benthic macroinvertebrates - adults dead, eggs in water, different stages, eggs developing and pupa or nymphs developing, until spring and increase in temperature triggers next stage in their life cycle. Pupa and nymphs aiding in decomposition and nutrient cycling.
Turtles - hibernating likely maybe moving about a bit still on super sunny days.
Fish - likely a bit deeper but still some veg around. Decreased activity.
How does the social science chapter relate to my overall thesis?
Without changing human behaviour we cannot hope to protect the environment given that human behaviour is the biggest cause of environmental degradation.
In the context of my thesis, for created wetlands to act as habitat for freshwater biota in urban areas they must both be built in the first place and not be degraded once built. Both of which require support from various stakeholders.
This support comes in various forms of pro-environmental behaviours such as voting for environmentally minded politicians and reducing waste.
There are various barriers to this support however.
For example, studies have shown that a lack of knowledge, eduction, or awareness are barriers to the implementation of green initiatives in cities (O’Donnell et al, 2017).
And other studies have shown that attitudes are one of the predictors of pro-environmental behaviour (Bamberg & Möser, 2007; S. Clayton & Myers, 2009).
Therefore, before we can change human behaviours, we first must understand why people act they way they do.
My main focus is PEBs as this is what will impact the habitat in my study socially. But, I cannot assume people living in the Jock river watershed have negative attitudes or lack knowledge.
Therefore, my social study will determine the knowledge, attitudes, and PEBs of locals in an attempt to see how likely it is they would degrade them and see how likely they would be to support future wetland creations.
What are some trends in my field?
UN decade of restoration - 2021 to 2030
Rewiliding - natural state with reduced human influence
Working together to solve problems - transdisciplinarity.
