Firstly, I believe my ecological research was narrowed down due to winter. After my observations, I decided to study how the presence or absence of fruit trees influenced squirrel activity levels in St.Vital Park. At first, I had a different approach toward data collection, but thanks to Robyn for providing me with feedback and help. I decided to set up more sample stations instead of just 3 which I initially planned on doing. I observed 10 stations for 10 mins each for 1 day instead of observing 3 stations for 10 days. I had collected the data for my initial plan already but I decided to take the feedback seriously and went another day to collect new data. I was really happy with the data I collected with the new method.
I chose 5 stations that had fruit trees while the other 5 didn’t have any fruit trees and observed the squirrel activity levels per station for 10 mins each and collected the data. This data collection was done in 1 day.
This course taught me a lot about the research side of ecology and I really enjoyed it. This was the first time I have ever done a hands-on project all by myself. Now I have a clear idea of how a study is designed and implemented. This made me appreciate how ecological theory was developed. I also realized the effort it takes to start a question and design a plan to answer it. I am excited and looking forward to future ecology courses.
I am impressed how fast you went through the research project, most people who try to do that struggle quite a bit. You clearly had a good grasp of what type of question you could answer in a course situation and I’m glad I was able to help and you were able to collect additional data.