RESEARCH OVERVIEW

Following are the basic tasks you will need to carry out with your list of Wildlife Refuges.  These are explained in detail at the Research Protocols section of the website.  This section will give you the overview so you can see where things are going. 

1) Do any background reading assigned by your instructor.  The material on the website assumes a basic familiarity with the ecology of invasive species, species interactions, and community ecology concepts like biodiversity, species coexistence, and the niche.

2) Read the materials on the website, including the project introduction and the research protocols. Click through all the links so you’ll know what’s here and where to find what you need. 

3) Read through the data for each of your assigned refuges.  Pay attention to whether invasive plant lists are attached, whether overall plant lists appear to exist, and whether landscover/habitat data is included.

4) E-mail the contact person for your refuge to get any updated data on native/invasive species.  Read the attached e-mail templates and carefully choose the correct template (i.e. make sure you ask for precisely the right information).  Refuge personal are typically very busy (no they don’t just hang out and watch wildlife all day), so you’ll likely only get one shot at this.

5) Do the training exercises – this will typically be done as part of your class.  These will help make sure you know what you’re doing before you start on the real data.

6) Go through the refuge data and pull out the necessary information.  Enter it into your class spreadsheet.  This includes the calculations of weights for each data set and Simpson’s index of evenness.

7) Go to the Biota of North America website and look for a complete exotic plant list for the refuge.  Also get a list for the county (or counties) that the refuge is in – this is your invasive species pool. 

8) Review your data with your instructor and with the author students who have compiled data for that same refuge.  Resolve discrepancies among entries.  If these cannot be resolved, average the relevant entries to finalize the data for each refuge.

9) With your class, carry out the analysis of the factors that influence invasive richness in refuges in your region.

10) Make sure you class data is in the correct format and then contribute your class data to the full project analysis.