Questions every biologist should ask before starting research

It's getting to be that magical time of year again! No, it's not Christmas. I'm talking about the time of year when most professors and students have time off from coursework and can venture out to do fieldwork! Whether you're spending the better part of a full day traveling to Madagascar or driving a few minutes from home to your field site, field work is arguably the best part of being a biologist. That said, there are a few things I've learned from my own experiences that I think are worth sharing. Here are ten questions I think everyone should ask themselves before they head to the field.

1. What's the point? No really, what is the significance of your research? This matters because you're probably going to have to include a significant portion of your write-up, whether it's a thesis, academic paper, or paper for class, to what makes your research matter. Knowing the significance of your research also helps you if you're applying for any type of grant or funding because it will definitely be a major factor when considering if your research is worth funding.

Photo credit: US Fish and Wildlife

2. What are the applications of your research? Can anyone use your results? If you're working in a national or state park, are those officials going to use what you've learned in their practices? Or will your results make a difference to future research projects?

3. What's the minimum you need to accomplish this research? Stuff goes wrong. Plans fail. Something you never could have imagined happens and completely changes your plan. Can your research survive? What part of your methods is essential?

4. How much data do you want to collect? What's the least amount of data you need to collect in order for your project to be successful?

5. Who can you rely on for help? You'll likely have questions. Maybe something will go terribly wrong or maybe you'll think of a great idea while in the field. You might not have the time or resources to research that new idea or alternative plan fully, so who can you call? Who can you email for advice? Are there experts out there you haven't met personally, but who may be worth mustering up the courage to shoot an email to? I'm a big fan of collaboration and scientists helping scientists. Chances are, if you're polite and the person you're requesting help from isn't a total jerk, that person will extend a hand or point you in the direction of someone who can answer your question.

6. How excited you are about this research? Because you're going to encounter bumps in the road,
you're probably going to work on this project more than you ever imagined, and your project is going to be questioned and scrutinized, so you better love it. You better be invested. You're going to have a much harder time if this was really your advisor's idea and it's not your baby, it might be a long road.

Me observing sifakas
Photo credit: Saotra Rakotonomenjanahary

7. How can you connect with nonprofits and conservation organizations to make your research have a significant impact? Yes, your research probably has a very important indirect effect on conservation biology. Sure, studying the reproduction of the Vences' chameleon will help us understand more about the species, thus conserving it. But wouldn't it be better if you could pair with WWF for example and attach a more direct conservation project to your research, collaborate with a partner outside of academia, and make more of a difference?

8. What's the best way to collect data, knowing you're going to eventually enter it all into an Excel sheet and run statistical analyses on it? Think about how you're going to analyze your data. Think about how you're going to arrange your observation sheets and your field notebook so that it's painless (relatively) to enter it all into your computer. You also want your data to go smoothly from your Excel or FileMaker Pro or whatever to a statistical software package. Reformatting your data because you didn't take the time to think about it beforehand is painful and can be very time-consuming. If you're not sure about your statistics or data entry, go talk to a statistician (your advisor should also be able to help you with this).

9. Think about how you're going to present your final product and what details you might want to collect or note while you're doing research that aren't essential to your research question, but that might be nice to have. For example, it's hard to show a slide with a photo of everyone in your lab if you never took that photo. For your study on behavior and daily activity budget, it's impossible to determine if humidity might have had an effect on how much time your giraffes spent resting if you didn't measure humidity. Think about the little things.

10. What photos are you going to wish you had taken when you return home/finish your research? There's always at least one...

Research experience as an undergraduate student (or earlier)

Courtesy: National Science Foundation

Whether you're an undergraduate biology major or a high-school student figuring out whether or not you want to be a biology major, getting research experience is a wise idea. In fact, it's arguably even essential, depending on what stage of your education/career you're in.

More people are getting their undergraduate degree than ever before. Many students do well in terms of grades and have excellent recommendation letters from their professors. By gaining research experience, you set yourself apart from the majority in a competitive field. You show that you can use all of the knowledge from the books and apply it, and moving beyond the book smarts is important. I think it's in most (if not all) students best interest to gain research experience before graduating.

There are multiple ways to do this: choose coursework that includes independent research as part of the course, do an independent study with a professor in your department or a department you're interested in, do an undergraduate thesis if you're really willing to take on the work load, or gain your research experience over the summer.

Many universities have research experience for undergraduates (REU) programs that take place over the summer. These are programs specifically designed with undergrads in mind. They typically don't require any previous research experience, although some may require certain coursework or that you be in you junior or senior year of your degree. You'll work with a faculty member and you'll be paid to do research. Housing is also usually provided.

Courtesy: National Science Foundation

The experience you have in an REU will depend on the project itself and the faculty member running the project. You may find yourself working under the guidance of a graduate student on a daily basis or you may find that you do your assigned work and check in with the faculty member every few days or so. Most REUs accept only ten or so students and they can be quite competitive. Check out this PDF from the University of Wisconsin-Madison on what an REU is, applying for one, and why you should do one.

If an REU isn't for you, there are still plenty of other options. Doing an independent study for a semester or two allows you to work one-on-one with a professor and assist with his/her research. You can develop a deep understanding of a specific topic, learn about what the research process is like, and earn a grade and credits for your efforts. If you play your cards right and enjoy the experience, that professor you work with can also be a great reference, as he/she will really get to know you over the time.

There are many parts of the research process: the initial design, applying for funding, preliminary data collection, experiment design, redesign, data analysis, and writing up your results. Try and get experience in as many of these areas as possible or talk to your professors or supervisors about their experiences. This is a time in your life when you can gain experience and learn a lot from your supervisors and other project mentors. It may seem a bit intimidating, but everyone knows you're an undergraduate, a newbie. The point is to contribute and learn. 

Whether you choose to do an REU, an independent study, a larger undergraduate thesis, or purposefully enroll in courses with research as a component, there is nothing like gaining hands-on experience. You'll discover whether or not you like working in a lab or want to work in the field. You'll find out if you're great at designing your own projects or if you're better at following directions. A career as a research scientist is not for everyone just as fieldwork is not for everyone or lab work. The only way you will find any of this out is by exploring it yourself. Having these experiences will set you apart and make you more unique as an applicant for jobs or graduate programs. I don't think it's a stretch to say that you need to have some sort of research experience to be a competitive applicant for graduate programs, as more and more people are pursing post-graduate degrees. Potential graduate advisors want to know that you can do the research you're applying to work with them for. They don't want to send you out to the field and find out you can't stand the bugs and want to come home! Regardless of whether you want to apply to grad school, you should gain some research experience because you'll leave university with a better understanding of the work you are best at and the work you enjoy.

This is around the time when some REU applications are due. I've listed some REUs below, some of which are funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF).

NSF-funded project with the Enchinacea Project with opportunities for undergraduates, recent graduates, or even graduate students.
Experience for high-school student, undergraduates, and even teachers with Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.
REU with Models in Evolution, Ecology, and Systematics through Kent State.
Aquatic Chemical Ecology REU through Georgia Tech sponsored by NSF.
NSF-sponsored ten week program for undergraduates to do independent and collaborative research in the Chihuahuan Desert

For more REUs, check out the NSF website.

Finding new species in 2015-how it happens

Articles like this one from Mother Nature Network, titled 9 newly discovered species, pop up from time to time about new organisms that have been found by scientists. Just recently a previously unknown species of fish was discovered no less than five miles below the ocean's surface. New primate species are even discovered, although finding such large species is very rare.

Newly identified Rana kauffeldi Photo credit: Brian Curry

Wait, how is that we're still discovering completely new animals?  Scientists estimate that there are millions, yes millions, of species we still don't know about. While some of these unknown species are reptiles or rodents, most of them are less charismatic. Many species of insect have yet to be identified and many bacteria and plants are unknown too.

New species are often discovered when scientists look at the genome of one species only to find out that one species is really two or more separate species. For example, Bornean and Sumatran orangutans were once thought to be one species. No attention was given to breeding Bornean orangutans only with Bornean orangutans, and many zoos now have hybrid orangs because of this. It was through genetic analysis that we discovered that each island held its own, distinct species.

Some of the time scientists do discover completely new species that are unheard of to science. This usually happens in far-away and poorly studied areas of the globe. Scientists talk to locals in remote areas and hear about a species that doesn't match descriptions of known species. Behavior, anatomy, reproduction, and even vocalizations are all examined when determining if something is a new species. Scientists hunt around in the jungle, struggle to obtain a photograph or grab a sample specimen, and ideally consult with as many other experts as possible to make sure that this is in fact a new, distinct species. It's important to compare a possible new species with existing species to ensure that there are enough differences to satisfy calling something an entirely new species.

Classification of Saimiri oerstedii

A species is a group of organisms that are similar and capable of interbreeding. (To learn more about what the term species means in biology, check out this great page and this one from Berkley.) A species is given a Latin binomial name. Examples of Latin binomial names you might be familiar with include Homo sapiens for humans, Pan troglodytes for chimpanzees, and Drosophila melanogaster for the common fruit fly. When we discover new organisms, it is the taxonomists who study those organisms and decide how they should be named. Taxonomy is the branch of science that includes the classification, identification, and description of organisms. You can see the classification for a species of squirrel monkey to the right. Taxonomy may sound a little boring, but classifying animals isn't always black and white. There's currently a debate about the classification of capuchin monkeys that you can read more about in this article.

So the next time you click on a link about the ten most interesting species discovered in 2014, you understand how it is species are found, how it's determined that those species are distinct, and how they are named.

Food for thought: What do you think is the best way to determine if a species is separate or distinct from another? Would you rely on genetics? Or look at the behaviors of the animal? Is whether or not the two populations coexist in the wild important? There are many things to consider!


News stories about recently discovered species:

Head to LiveScience to read about a species of monkey first spotted in 2007.
Read about a coughing frog species that was recently discovered or
five new bird species discovered in 2014.

A lack of results, it happens.

Earlier this month, I attended the American Society of Primatologists annual meeting to present a paper. One of the talks I attended that I really quite enjoyed was given by Jessica Rothman, "Within-Species Variability in the Microhabitats of Mountain Gorillas (Gorilla beringei): Implications for Nutrient Balancing."  As I'm sure you've guessed from the talk title, Rothman, a nutritional ecologist at the CUNY in NYC, studies mountain gorillas, the fuzziest of the gorillas. Mountain gorillas are primarily folivores, meaning their diet is composed largely of leaves and herbaceous matter. There are very few mountain gorillas left in the wild and there are none in captivity, so of course Rothman studies the ones remaining in the wild.

Male mountain gorilla

Rothman noticed that the gorillas would sometimes bypass or ignore foods that they would stop and feed on at other times. She wanted to know why. Why would the gorillas pass up foods in one instance only to stop and feed on the same type of food in other instances? Some days gorillas will feed on these plants all day and other times they will travel right by them. That seems a little odd, doesn't it?

Sounds like a great question to me! To answer her question, Rothman collected lots of plant samples and recorded information about the microhabitat in which those samples were found. Variables she looked at included altitude, slope angle, topographic position, and areas of the park zoned for human use. She looked to see if gorillas stopped to consume plants at say a lower altitude for example and ignored the ones at a higher altitude, or if perhaps gorillas ignored foods in human-use areas and stopped to feed on the same plants outside of these areas.

Next, foods were analyzed for their nutritional value. The amount of sugar, protein, and fiber in each sample was determined as what the amount of tannins, bitter tasting compounds produced by plants that deter animals from feeding on the plant. Perhaps foods found in areas outside of human use are of higher nutritional quality than foods found inside areas that humans frequent.

Unfortunately, there were no real significant differences in any of the nutrients or tannins with respect to the microhabitat variables Rothman and colleagues looked at, especially when one considers what gorillas would be able to detect in terms of nutrients. 

Photo by Dylan Walters

Rothman found lots of nutritional variability within microhabitats, including variability within a single month, but as Rothman said, we're not yet able to explain this variability or were not asking the right questions.

This may seem like a disappointing result, and in ways it is. Of course as scientists, we like to ask questions and then have a concrete answer. We want to be able to say, "Gorillas are avoiding plants in high altitudes because the nutritional content of those plants is lower" for example, but that's not what was found. The reality is that sometimes we can't find a correlation, a connection or relationship between two or more things showing interdependence (note this connection or relationship is not necessarily causation), or an answer to our original question. Maybe we're looking at the wrong variables, maybe we're missing some key part of the puzzle, maybe there isn't a link there at all, or maybe our methodology isn't quite the best way to answer the question we're asking. This happens to all scientists regardless of the field.

A lack of correlations or findings is not a waste of time or complete loss though. New questions can present themselves or a new approach may suddenly become clear. And it's important to remember that we do learn from studies where no correlations are found. Scientist still need to publish their results and share them with others.




Food for thought: Why do scientists still need to publish studies where no correlations are found? Why is it important to share these results?

More food for thought: Can you think of how Rothman might use different methods to answer this question? What else might be causing gorillas to pass the same foods at some points in time and stop and feed on them at other times?

Why scientists need cultural relativism

It can be easy to forget, as a scientist, that a great deal of our work does involve working with people. You may have a vision of spending all day in a lab coat or out in the field with your binoculars, but everyone has to interact with people at some stage or another. Any scientist who wants to work abroad is going to require a firm grasp of what anthropologists have termed "cultural relativism."

Just outside capital city of Madagascar, Antananarivo

Cultural relativism is the notion that our beliefs and thoughts on civilization are relative and are "true" only so far as our own culture goes. It's the idea that our culture makes the most sense, is the most civil, and is the least weird, because it is our culture.

How does this relate to traveling as a scientist? Well, it means that when we judge others, whether it's the locals who are hunting primates for food, communication styles that are less direct, or shamanistic practices we don't understand, we need to take a reflective step back. Had we been raised in these cultures, hunting primates for food would seem as "normal" as eating a hamburger. When comparing children to their parents, the phrase "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" is often used. Cultural relativism is a bit like an expansion of this idea: we need to keep in mind the context of the tree and not expect that tree to be exactly like our own.

Workers in rice paddy

I think cultural relativism gets easier the more you travel or the more you read. Take a few anthropology courses and you'll realize that the word "normal" is hard to apply to all cultural concepts. What may be common in North America may be very strange to Malagasy and vice versa.

Here in Madagascar, which is a developing country, things tend to run a little slower than I'm used to, getting a check for lunch for example. Children beg for money in the street and particularly target wealthy foreigners, who have a lot of money in comparison to many Malagasy people. Traffic is chaotic and seemingly without rules. Recycling is non-existent. Taxi drivers honk at you, assuming all foreigners need a ride everywhere. All of these things seem strange and different, but not when one stops and realizes that this is a different place. One of the best parts of traveling is seeing new things and meeting new people.

Which of the following is an example of cultural relativism?

A.  An American moves to Madagascar and attempts to educate local people about the benefits of modern medicine because shamanism is silly.
B. An American moves to Madagascar and becomes accustomed to the parasites found in local food.
C. An American moves to Madagascar and no longer gets annoyed at taxi drivers honking but sees this as normal.
D. All of the above
E. B and C





The answer: C. Parasites are not cultural and A is the opposite of cultural relativism.

Critical thinking: Does the idea of cultural relativism only apply when traveling abroad? Why or why not?