Lab Reports

 ~ Lab reports should be written in the following format. Every attempt should be made to write concisely, using correct grammar, and complete sentences. Check a volume of the journal Ecology for examples of how to prepare/cite tables and figures, literature, etc.

• The INTRODUCTION should in the first paragraph, in two or three sentences, provide some background information as to the nature of the problem being researched. This information can usually be gleaned right from the lab handout. The introduction, after all, is where you set up the background for your results in the discussion section (see below). Be original. Persons who start a report with the phrase "The purpose of this lab was to..." will be fed to the big, fast, nasty, hairy spiders in my lab.

  The last paragraph (a sentence or two) of the introduction should be a formal description of the hypothesis(ses) you are testing, or whatever else you think you were doing. In other words, state what you are doing.

• The METHODS section should include a sentence (at least) about the study sites and a sentence or two about the particular methods you used to collect the data. Do not repeat the instructions in the lab handout; simply refer to them as necessary. But do mention any specific controls or procedures that you used that differed from those suggested in the lab handout. Mention if anything went wrong. Again, check a copy of Ecology for any style questions.

• The RESULTS section should include data and statistical results. It is often unnecessary or even inappropriate to present raw data; usually the handout will indicate whether data should be plotted on a graph, or presented in a short table. Be explicit with your statistical tests, however; state H_o and H_a, level of significance, one- or two-tailed test, probabilities , etc. I will be around to help you with this.

• The DISCUSSION should be where you explore the ramifications of your results. This is where well-founded speculation comes in handy - use your imagination (tempered of course with your extensive knowledge of organisms and your logic). The questions suggested in the lab handout might help to channel your discussion (but they need not be answered explicitly). Why did things come out the way that they did? Why didn't your results support the predictions? (This often happens and is no cause for alarm ...a well-explained lab that did not work out as expected is more to your credit than a lab that did apparently come out right but was not well explained or in which you fudged the data). What is the ecological/evolutionary meaning of your results? What do your results mean in the context of general ecological theory? Thus any reports will be expected to be concise; excluding tables and figures, they should not contain much more than two pages of writing if you communicate well (which is, after all, part of science).

 ~ Still confused?! For more tips on producing the perfect lab report, see "The Lab Report" by Dr. Frank Hensley at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This should help!

Data Sheets

 ~ For other experiments that we run or data that we collect, you will be required to analyze the data, show the work for the statistics that you used, and use the results of your analysis to answer a few questions. These reports will comprise a data sheet that you will hand in.