ethics and methods Flashcards
(25 cards)
issues with fieldwork
impacts of travel and field sites
scientific colonialism
presence of humans impact - predators
when to intervene
trapping and tagging ethically
removal of animals especially if endangered species
captivity issues
abiotic conditions- light, space, temp etc
biotic- aggression, overcrowding, loneliness, pathogens
reporting of protocols
experiments
manipulation
- stress is minimised and justified ie. predator exposure
- indirect stress ie. capture, tagging, ringing
euthanising animals when needed, over suffering
three rs
replace - alternative methods to use on live animals
reduce - keep smapke size minimum
refine - use methods that minimise pain and suffering
ehical regualtions
- every country has own laws on animal welfare, international collaborations ie animals scientific procedures act 1986
ethical law
need institutional license, project licences, personal licence
quantitative vs qualitative observations
quan = define behaviour, count occurrence, plot data and use stats
qual = describe what was observed, no pre defined categories, identify themes and trends to form subjective view
ethograms
way to define and categorise behaviours
list of typical bhevaiours performed by species
used to extract activity budget
focus on specific areas
latency, frequency, duration and intensity sampling metrics
latency = reaction time
freq = percentage of observed time spent resting
duration = length of time spent on event
intensity = strength of behaviour i.e.. speed
types of measuremnt most commonyl used
continuous ie. time
nominal or categorical ie. listing behaviour’s
ordinal like ranked categories, size
frequency sampling methods
continuously = all the time
time sampling = instantaneous = record behaviour at set time point
ad libitum = as it happens, use for specific behaviour
combination
type of sampling method
focal = one individual at a time
scan = record multiple individuals
length of time sampling methods
overall
per individual or group = consider seasons, bias etc
sampling bias
bias towards WEIRD = western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic individuals
STRANGE = social background, trappability (bold individuals explore more), rearing history(wild caught or captive born), acclimation (habituated), natural changes in responsiveness, genetic make up and experience
observer effects
how will presence of observer impact behaviour
intra and inter observer reliability
intra = agreement with yourself
inter = agreement with merge data set
test yourself and eachother at start middle end and instruments need caliborating, definitions of roles/ behvaiour
fatigue could impact view
chi squared
categorical or freq data
pearson product moment
continious data with normal distrubution with two conditions and correlation
t test
continuours data with two conditions and comparing the average
anova
continuous data with more than two conditions
spearman rank
non normal distrubution with two conditions and correlation
mann whitney
data with non normal distrubution two conditions and comparing avergages
recording technology
- smartphone or app but have to pre load definitions of observations
- video or audio recorders - permamant, high speed footage, multiple angles, night cam
- remote tech - gps, temp loggers, heart rate
- automated software
- ## camera traps- automatic trigger, non invasive, elusive species or remote locations, night and day, store large amount of data but analysis is lagged by collection of data, can use to measure animal size
biologging
-remotelt record various info
location, behaviour with accelorometers, speed, depth/altitude, heart rate,temp, light levels
