Now that I have completed my field experiment, I have more understanding of the processes that go into developing ecological studies. My experiment changed somewhat throughout the course as I implemented different data collection methods to get more meaningful results. I increased the number of replicates in my study, and added an amount of observation time to get more data in my results. I have realized that developing an ecological hypothesis takes a huge amount of observation and visiting a location many times to be able to understand what processes are happening in an ecosystem. Once an ecological process is identified, it takes some trial and error to come up with an experiment that can provide results to prove or disprove a hypothesis.
congrats on finishing! It is indeed a trial and error and something always changes!