The process of designing and implementing my own field research project was both fun and challenging. I had never done anything like this before, so it was a completely new experience for me. At the beginning, I was not really sure where to start and I would say that the hardest part was to find a suitable research question/topic. I had found the park in which I wanted to carry out my experiment but it took me at least 3 different trips before I found a suitable study organism and research topic. The park is highly managed so it was difficult to find something that was in its “natural” state. Once I had found it, then I tackled the project one step at the time and it started to feel more achievable. Deciding on how to measure my variables was also a challenge, particularly the determination of sunlight levels (my predictor variable).
This project has, indeed, deepened my appreciation for ecological research. My project was relatively simple to design and implement as there was only two variables and they were, in hindsight, fairly straightforward. Reliable studies surely require a lot of time (and sometimes resources) for all phases (design and hypothesis formulation, implementation, data collection, data analysis, report production) and going through all of these phases made me appreciate the patience, knowledge and dedication of ecology theorists and researchers.