BIO321 Leopards Hunt at Night Ecological Experiment Assignment

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BIO321

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In this assignment, you will design an ecological experiment to test one of your hypotheses generated in the previous assignment. Click here to access your previous assignment about ecological hypotheses: which will be attached below

Your experiment should consist of treatments and measurements that will yield the data needed to support or reject your hypothesis. When designing your experiment, assume that you will have the time and money to conduct an experiment of any reasonable scale. As a guide, think about relevant experiments that you have encountered in BIO 320 or BIO 321.

Please use the following template to be sure that you have completed all aspects of this assignment: which will be attached below

To guide you, an example of a completed assignment can be found here: which will be attached below


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Ecological questions State your ecological question here (2 points): Why leopards hunt at night rather than hunting during the day like many other animals when there is enough light? Describe your observation(s) that motivated your ecological question (3 points): During my visits to game parks, I noticed that most of the leopards do not hunt during the day. During the day, most of the predators are seen resting on trees and it is even difficult for a person to notice them due to their camouflaging character. However, some of them hunt for the prey during the day and they walk stealthy towards the prey to ensure they land on the targets. State two different hypotheses that could answer your ecological question (8 points): 1 Hypothesis 1) Leopards hunt at night because of their physique Hypothesis 2) Leopards hunt during the day whenever they feel they are hungry and the prey is nearby Relate each of your hypotheses to concepts or models covered in BIO 320 or 321 (12 points): Hypothesis 1) In the In Cog Books for BIO 320, we leant how certain animal features have made them to adapt to their current preying habits. For instance, leopards are nocturnal animals. Therefore, they are able to see well at night. It makes it easy to locate and catch their prey during the night since in most cases; the prey doesn’t have good vision during the night. Additionally, leopards have the ability to camouflage. They change their color to resemble that of the surrounding environment hence making it difficult for the prey to establish their existence at a particular place. Having nocturnal eyes and ability to camouflage are some factors that make leopards hunt at night since they can easily spot the prey while the prey may not locate the predator. Hypothesis 2) In the books, we also learnt about the optimal foraging models which state that when searching for food, an animal will use a foraging strategy that aims to provide a lot of benefits and at the same time using the lowest cost hence maximizing on the overall energy obtained. Therefore, leopards will not wait until night hours for it to look for food when it is day time, they are hungry and the prey is nearby. They will maximize on the opportunity and go after the prey during the day to deal with the hunger other than waiting until night hours to go hunting when majority of the prey are sleeping. It therefore, explains why in some occasions, leopards hunt during the day. Hypothesis: Copy one of your hypotheses from the previous assignment here. Treatments (independent variables): Describe the treatments for your experiment and any materials needed to establish these treatments. Be sure to include relevant information about the equipment or resources needed to create these treatments. If applicable identify a treatment used to control for effects unrelated to your hypothesis. (5 points) Measurements (dependent variables): Specify what variables you will measure in each treatment and any materials needed to make these measurements. (5 points) Predictions: Be sure to specify the pattern of variation among treatments predicted by your hypothesis. You may insert a drawing of the predicted pattern to support your answer (5 points) Replication: Most experiments require at least 20-30 observations per treatment to estimate the effect of a treatment accurately. Describe how you would replicate observations in your experiment. Why is this method of replication appropriate for the hypothesis you are testing? Be sure to specify which units are being replicated (organisms, cages, populations, sites, communities, etc.). (4 points) Randomization: How would you randomly assign replicates to each of your treatments? Be sure to describe a manual or computerized method of randomization that you would use. (2 points) Use your this method to randomly assign each subject in this table to one of two hypothetical treatments, A or B. (2 points) Subject 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Treatment (A or B) Note that the randomization of subjects does not ensure that you will have an equal number of subjects per treatment, which biologists call a balanced design. Did your randomization method produce a balanced design in the table above? How could you modify the method to ensure a balanced design? (2 points) Example for Ecological Hypotheses Assignment State your ecological question here (2 points): Why do squirrels decide to run to trees before eating food instead of eat food in the open where they find it? Describe your observation(s) that motivated your ecological question (3 points): During several visits to my site, I observed squirrels foraging in open grassy areas. When finding food, a squirrel would sometimes run to a tree and climb to an upper branch before eating. In other cases, a squirrel would just consume the food where it was found. State two different hypotheses that could answer your ecological question (8 points): Hypothesis 1) Squirrels consume food in a tree whenever they feel that a predator is nearby. Hypothesis 2) Squirrels consume food in a tree whenever a tree is close enough or the food is small enough to carry without expending too much energy. Relate each of your hypotheses to concepts or models covered in BIO 320 or 321 (12 points): Hypothesis 1) In CogBooks for BIO 320, we learned about ways that predators affect the behaviors and life histories of prey. In one example, frog embryos hatched early when disturbed by the vibrations of a snake eating their siblings. This type of anti-predator behavior has a potential cost, because the embryos must leave the egg earlier than usual and begin their tadpole stage at a smaller size. Therefore, frogs only behave this way when they sense a predator in their environment. Similarly, squirrels must expend energy to move between food and safety while foraging. They should only expend this energy when sensing that a predator is nearby. Hypothesis 2) In several courses (CogBooks for BIO 182 and 320 and in the Foraging Lab for BIO 321), we learned about models optimal foraging. These models assume that animals behave in ways that maximize their net energy gain. If squirrels feel threatened in an open area, the decision to move to safety before eating would impose an energetic cost. The net energy gain would be the amount of energy in food, minus the cost of finding the food and moving to a safe place. If we increase the cost of moving between the location of food and a location of safety, an animal should be less likely to move to safety before eating. The energetic cost that causes an animal to switch between these behaviors should depend on the amount of risk in the open vs in a tree.
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