Journal Basics
   Things you must do each time
   Getting started
   Overview of journal exercises

Tips and Techniques
Where to Observe the Animals
Examples of What we Want
About the Animals

Personal Journal - Basic Instructions - 1999

The major vehicle for getting you to be an active participant in the course is the journal of observations and ideas you will keep during the course. It will teach you a lot about your interest in and skill at watching animals. It will also teach you a lot about how animals behave, how science is done, and how to identify and deal with bias. This handout covers the basic rules for your journal and an overview of the assignments. You will get a handout with detailed instructions before each exercise. There is also be a lot of essential information about journals and the animals you will most likely encounter on the Bio 45 web site -- www.brown.edu/Courses/Bio_45/.

The journal is an essential learning tool for this course and it gives you a personalized way to communicate with us You have to be involved with the journal regularly (not just a day before the assignment is due). I encourage you to put more into your journal than the minimum required in the assignments. As you begin to appreciate its value, you should feel less like having to do it and more like wanting to. If this does not happen, at least there is one less career option to worry about.

Each of the 5 main journal exercises will be graded on two basic points: 1) was it on time and complete? and 2) did you put in the minimum required effort? In addition, I may use my estimate of your effort and progress in the journal as a means of deciding whether to raise or lower your final course grade. I might compensate for a relatively poor exam score if your journal shows the understanding I expect, or I can lower your grade if I feel you have not made enough progress in your ability to observe and to work with ideas.

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Things You Must do for Every Journal Assignment

1. Turn in Your Journal on Time.

On the dates listed on the Reading List, give your journal to your teaching assistant at lecture. It will be returned to you by the next lecture with our comments. The journal assignments must be completed on time. We will return incomplete journals to you at the next lecture and expect them back, completed, by the following lecture.

2. Pay close attention to the assignments -- be sure to complete them!

Although the journal is an open-ended learning tool, each assignment is designed to help you enhance your ability to see, describe and interpret behavior. You must complete the assignment as requested. Take the assignment sheet with you when you observe.

3. Include the following at the beginning of each observation:

• Date - e.g., Friday, 10 September

• Location - e.g., sidewalk between Sciences library and Chemistry building

• Organisms observed - e.g., workers of a colony of ants - foraging at remains of ice cream cone

• Weather and comments about conditions - e.g., windy, partly cloudy and cold. Rained a lot yesterday - standing puddles on walkway. Sun shines directly on sidewalk.

• Starting time of observations -- ending time of observations - e.g., 1:35 to 2:20

• Record the time every 5-10 min. as you are watching, or as major events occur.

4. Structure your journal so we can easily find weekly assignments.

Clearly label each exercise you are doing. Guide us to the relevant bits (Post-It notes are great!).

5. Leave us room to make comments and answer your questions.

6. Record your observation and brainstorming times on the calendar we will provide.

7. Use a hard cover, bound notebook (e.g., Chemistry lab book)

If you want to make an observation and do not have your journal, use separate sheet of paper and then tape or staple it into your journal later -- do not add loose pages.

8. Write as you watch, not hours later.

Messy writing and first hand observations are better than neat writing and edited observations. However, we still have to be able to read your notes. You can always summarize your observations to help us through a chaotic page or two of field notes.

9. Try not to interfere with the animals you watch.

Be patient, stay still for at least 15-20 minutes before you give up on an individual. Don't try to get too close.

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Getting Started

You should have no trouble finding animals to observe; there are dozens of kinds of animals on campus during the fall. If you aren't getting anywhere ask your TA or me for some advice -- or check the Bio 45 web site. Do not give up too soon or overlook the details while waiting for something "exciting" to happen. Remember that for every minute of animal behavior you see on TV there probably were 2-20 hours of waiting and filming to catch that short moment. Do not to end up with notes that only describe your interaction with or difficulty in watching the animal (e.g., "the bird looked up, saw me and flew off -- I chased it and it flew out of sight..."). You soon will encounter lots of questions that animal behavior researchers face. What are possible answers to the following?

• What age or sex is the animal am I watching? Is it the same one I just watched?

• How do I tell one behavioral event from another?

• How can I tell if what I just saw is an accident or an important event?

• I can describe the behavior, but how can I tell what the animal was really doing?

• What else should I record besides the behavior ?

• How do I make observations in an unbiased way? Can I compensate for my bias?

Some answers will be found in lectures, readings, discussions, our comments, and the web page.

Finding animals: The first discussion section will provide you with some suggestions. The web page introduces some common animals and guides you to some good things to look for. The best animals on campus are: pigeons, squirrels, sparrows, flies and other insects. Do not use humans as subjects. Beware of the complexity of dogs and cats and your familiarity with them. You have a lot of biases about them and they tend to center their behavior on you or their owners. Remember, we want to know what the animals were doing not how they were interacting with you, or what you were doing while trying to see them behave!

Where do you start? Watch a squirrel go up and down a tree a few times. Watch until something about how it comes down the tree strikes you as odd. Then figure out and describe how it came down -- that will sharpen your ability to focus on details. Watch a dog on the green. Eventually it will meet another dog or a person. Describe what it does, how it does it, and what the dog does before and afterwards -- do not leave out any detail -- don't use words like happy, excited, afraid, angry or aggressive!!. Watch a pigeon walking around and describe in detail how it moves. Note changes in posture (relative position of and extension of body parts) or sequences of actions. Leave a piece of fruit around long enough to attract flies and watch what they do - really close - and describe it. Be patient, you may see feeding, aggression and maybe even reproduction.

If you do not know your animal's name (e.g., dog, pigeon, wasp...) then describe what it looked like as best you can (e.g., "A bird, smaller than a robin, has no obvious color markings and looks sort of like a jet plane in silhouette - made lots of tittering sounds as it flew, and it flew sort of jerky all over the sky.") and where you saw it (e.g., flying over the green around 6:00 PM). That way we can help you identify the beast (in this case a chimney swift). You can also check the descriptions and pictures of common campus animals on the Bio 45 web site.

The Brown campus is the best place for most of your observations. The further away you go, the more time it will take. Three to four hours of observation per week means just the time spent watching, not finding the animals! Try quieter parts of campus. Try the same places at different times of day. Check the bird feeder near Lincoln Field; but, do not do all your observations there!.

Play it safe when observing. Students have been harassed while doing observations in Swan Point Cemetery and Blackstone Park. India Point Park is also risky. If you go to these places; go with one or more people. Also Rabies is on the increase (raccoons and skunks) and Lyme disease carrying ticks and their hosts (deer and small mammals) are common. Be sure to check for deer ticks (and dog ticks too). Deer ticks are small, one would easily fit inside this "o".

Someone will tell you to go to Roger Williams Park Zoo. Do that after you are good at watching campus animals, and check the Bio 45 web site first! Do not expect much from the animals at the zoo -- often you will find them pacing or sleeping. You have to go early in the day to see the most action. Do not overlook ducks, geese, pigeons and other "non-zoo animals" there. Try to avoid zoo syndrome -- there are so many animals to check that you only spend a few minutes on each one. Spend an hour or so your first time at the zoo day wandering around to get an idea of what is there and what they are doing. Then stay with one animal for an hour or so before moving on.

Describing behavior versus telling a story: One problem that many of you will face is the difference among describing 1) what an animal is doing, 2) what you were doing while you were watching it, and 3) what you judge it to be doing. You want to do only the first kind of description. Try the following. Watch an insect or a bird. Describe its behavior. Then watch and describe the behavior of a dog or cat you know well. Compare the descriptions. Notice how the cat or dog is described as doing things to meet goals. Notice how often you comment on its motivations and feelings. Did you do the same with the insect or bird?

Describing an animal's behavior and not what you think the animal's goals or motivations are will get you to the details. For example, do not write that "the robin was looking for worms" instead of "the robin hopped three times then stood with its head tilted to one side, then hopped three more times and did the same head tilt, but this time to the right and then the left". Or, do not write that "the white dog was afraid of the owner" instead of writing that "the white dog seemed to bend its legs and lower its body, dropping its head and tail toward the ground when its owner approached". Instead of saying that a dog was afraid or angry, describe its posture and vocalizations. Did it bare its teeth, wag its tail, raise the hair on its back, hold its tail up, stand up tall, approach head-on, lie down on its back, have its ears up? These details are important! Knowing the difference between a growling dog that is expressing fear or aggression could save you a trip to the hospital (Hint: a major cue is in how the lips are held and how far back the corner of its mouth is). Details are important!

Draw pictures when possible. Drawings focus your attention on behavior you might otherwise miss. Your questions about behavior are also important. Feel free to make guesses about possible answers to your questions. Then challenge yourself to back up any interpretation you make. How do you know the wasp was looking for food and not for a mate? What clues could you use to make the distinction? Think about the kinds of information you would need to have and then how you might get it. Above all, notice details and patterns of behavior, then be creative about what they might suggest and how you might find out with further observation.

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Overview of Journal Exercises

Exercise 1: Description and Analysis of Behavior

You will describe the behavior of different animals in great detail. No matter how good you are at theory and memorizing facts, you cannot study animal behavior unless you are good at finding, and watching animals and describing their behavior. We should be able to visualize what you saw by reading your notes. Each day you should describe some new behavior or group of behaviors for an animal you have watched for at least 15 min. and preferably for more than 30 min. . You are welcome to speculate and to record this speculation in your journal, but focus mainly on the detailed description of behavior. You should also keep track of things like: how you chose the animal, what your thoughts were about how to describe it and where you were "guessing" as opposed to purely describing. This will give you insight into how previous experience, and lack of knowledge about anatomy, taxonomy, and physiology influence what you see and how you describe it.

Exercise 2: Observations In Pairs - Focus on foraging

Important warning: this exercise will take careful planning and time budgeting. There is a lot to do and we require you to do it all -- don’t wait until the last minute or until after the first exam!

You will still focus on details, but this time the goal will be to quantify patterns in the behaviors you observe. You will do this in the context of foraging behavior. We will be talking about optimal foraging models in class. Quantifying things like time between prey encounters, handling times when catching and eating things, and tradeoffs between foraging and other activities tests the models. These models will make more sense if you have collected these kinds of data.

Observing in pairs will help you see how differently people view the same behavior. You can discuss what caused your observations to be similar or different. It will also allow you to plan your data collection and gather more data more efficiently. You and your partner will design and collect data for a small-scale experiment on foraging behavior

Exercise 3: Analysis of Behavior - Focus on interactions

All interactions among animals involve the production, exchange, and use of information. This can be passive (e.g., odor of a prey allows a predator to find it) or active (e.g., chirp of a cricket attracts a mate). You can see that this covers an enormous range of behavior. The rest of the course deals with the evolution of communication within species in various contexts: aggression, reproductive competition, mate choice, and social behavior. You need to get a grasp on how to observe and study communication. You will focus on the two questions from discussion section:

How can we tell when two animals are communicating?
How should communication be designed by selection?

Consider the sensory systems of the animals you are watching. You are largely an acoustic and visual animal, many animals are communicating using chemical signals or visual or acoustic ones beyond the range of your sensory systems. Watch accessible animals like birds, squirrels, cats and dogs who share parts of your visual and acoustic world. Remember that dogs, cats and squirrels means of communication may also have a strong olfactory side to them.

Exercise 4: Brainstorming

You should continue making behavioral observations, but we will now work more on thinking -- description and analysis of your ideas and the ideas of others about behavior. You will explore your own answers to questions you have about observations, lectures and readings. Create and play with your own ideas or those of others. There are two thinking projects here. See the web discussion for some great examples!

Conceptual or abstract thinking: Think while you write for a while. Take an idea that attracts or confuses you and present it in a different way. Stay within the realm of behavioral ecology and its language. Keep the problems simple. Tell us what you think about the theory or concepts you are learning. Analyze them or apply them. Strike out on your own. Take a different perspective and see how far you can push it. Play with a discussion question at the end of a chapter in Alcock. Tell Waage a better way to explain some concept or present an issue so that it would be clearer. Anything goes. I want you thinking and contributing your own ideas. Remember to write while you think, not just think a while and write a few sentences (see assignment details).

Doing experiments in your mind: You have accumulated a large number of questions from observations, discussion sections, readings and lectures. Pick an interesting but fairly simple question and try to identify all the possible answers (hypotheses) to it. Do not worry at first about plausibility -- try any idea that comes to mind. You can eliminate 'silly' ones later. Look for an appropriate null hypothesis.

Then try the "how might we test this" game. Think about ways to test one hypothesis against another or against a null hypothesis. First try to figure out the ideal test -- let your imagination roam. What data you would ideally like to have? Then see if you can modify the ideal to fit the practical or allowable. You may have to re-trace your steps at times. Perhaps you have too many hypotheses to test among. Try a different version of the original question or observation. See if it gives you fewer hypotheses. Suppose you are stuck with a single hypothesis. Try to test it by subjecting it to an experiment (or predictions derived from it) that will at least allow you to conclude it was a false hypothesis. Try not to simply support it. The experiments you design should go beyond simply collecting more data to confirm a pattern you think you see.

Exercise 5: Critiquing Ideas and the Literature

As you continue making behavioral observations, think about of your ideas and those of others. This last part of the course deals head on with the maximum complexity of both ideas and animal biology. In order to sort it all you need to abandon any attempt to just memorize everything. Instead you must continually use the conceptual tools we have developed to explore the ways in which ideas and biology interact with each other. A good way to do this is to look at the same issue or phenomenon from different perspectives.

Much of the course has been about how shifts in ways of thinking (including biases) have affected what behavior people have looked for and seen, what hypotheses they have proposed, and how they have tested their ideas. From the abundance of examples encountered in the course, I want you to brainstorm on the major “shifts” in thinking (see below). You should write in a way that shows you understand the theory, the science, and the significance of the shift in thinking. At least one of these “shifts” will show up on the exam, so here is a good way to get prepared for that.

You also should get an idea of what is going on in the behavior literature these days. The third part of the assignment requires you to go to the library and find a recent article that you feel ought to be in Alcock as an example of some important topic in behavioral ecology. I have decreased the number of hours of observations to give you time to find a behavior article you can really relate to. Do not leave this assignment to the last minute!

Exercise 6: Last Journal Assignment - Before and After

The object is for you to evaluate your progress in the course as reflected by the changes in your journal. Often, you are the best judge of your own progress - here is your chance to be your own critic. You will choose some samples of your writing to illustrate how your observation skills and thinking skills have changed during the semester. I will keep your journals until grading is completed. I'll refer to your journal when making border line grade decisions.

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