Key Skills in Zoology and Ecology Scientific Report

Instructions
 This assignment is worth 35% of this module.
 This is not a group piece of work but an individual assignment.
 There is a max word count of 1500 words (this does not include citation and
references but does include everything else).
 Your target audience is undergraduates like yourself.
 Be aware your academic tutor will be paying particular attention to the
statistical tests to use, how closely you follow the format, your standard of
written communication and how precisely you process and display your
results.
 You will need to produce a scientific report using the format below:

Title: Evaluation of the Catglo as a method for reducing predation on wild

birds by domestic cats (Felis catus) in the UK

You are being asked to analyse the results of a scientific study. This study,
conducted at the University of Reading, recruited cats (through their owners) to wear
(or not) a Catglo collar (n.b. Catglo is fictional do not try and look up
references on it!) for 6 weeks. The study recruited 1-5 year-old neutered cats within
urban areas of England during the summer of 2017. During the study, all cats were
allowed free access to the outdoors.

During the study half the cats (of either sex) wore a Catglo collar for the 6 week
period whilst the other half did not wear any collar. Owners recorded the number of
birds brought home by all cats regardless of collar.

After receiving these data, you must first introduce the background to this study and
the methodology involved in collecting the information. Next, analyse these data to
determine if cats wearing a Catglo collar brought home more or fewer birds and
then discuss the results of the study and its relevance and limitations.

This report will have the following sections contained within it; please include (but not
limit yourself to the following topics during your report):

 Introduction (approx. 500 words):

o Why studying cats is of interest
o What we know about their impacts on prey populations
o What we don’t know about their effects on prey populations
o How they might be managed
o Citations to named references
o Objectives for this study

 Methods (approx. 300-400 words)

o The purpose is to provide enough information that the reader could

repeat what you did.
 o Utilise the basic outline (detailed in the data document) to write your own
suggested methodology
o Use (and reference) similar studies from the literature to support your
methodology.
o Two key parts to the methods:
o Field/lab methods - The actual methods by which these data were
collected (i.e. participant recruitment, demographics, how predation
was measured etc)
o Data analysis – the tests used (e.g. t-tests, assumption test, etc.),
software used, etc.
o Pay special attention to how you eliminated sampling bias in your
experimental design.

 Results (max 100 words)

o Think about what questions you want to analyse.
o For example, you could ask some or all of the following:
o Difference between the male predation with and without Catglo?
o Difference between the female predation with and without Catglo?
o Difference between all predation (male and female) with and
without Catglo?
o Difference between the effect of Catglo on males and females?
o You need to select which questions are appropriate.
o Think about the hypothesis for each question you are asking.
o For example:
o Null hypothesis: There is no significant difference in the number of
birds caught when cats wear Catglo compared to cats that do not
wear Catglo.
o Alternative hypothesis: There is a significant difference in the number
of birds caught when cats wear Catglo compared to cats that do not
wear Catglo.
o Select the appropriate statistical test.
o Conduct assumption tests for normality and homogeneity of variance (if
needed)

o The results to present (in the report) in this section will be:
o Brief one or two sentences summarising results of each of the tests you
have performed.
o For example, “There was a significant difference in the mean weight of
male versus female tigers (Independent-sample t test: t198 = 76.5,
P<0.001). Female tigers were significantly heavier (Figure 1)”
o Graph(s) illustrating results:

 Discussion (approx. 500-700 words)

o Summary of your results:
o What did you discover? How do your results compare to other similar
studies?
 o Limitations:
o Was there anything about the study that might indicate that the
results may have limitations when applied to the general population?
o What biases affected your study?
o Suggestions for work needed in future studies.

 References

o Please use the Harvard style of referencing for this assignment (Key
Skills in Biomedicine).
o How many references?
o The rule is simple – cite a reference every time you make a
statement based on someone else’s work.
o This means that you probably need to cite at least one reference
at the end of most sentences.
o For this assignment, you will need to include at least FIFTEEN
references.
o With a maximum of TWO websites and TWO textbooks being
included in this total.
o This means your scientific research should primarily be made up of
scientific papers (a.k.a journal articles). Please visit
https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/articles-and-journals/articles and/or
https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/c.php?g=470773&p=3219557 for more
information.
o Many scientific papers can be found on the popular search engine
PubMed (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed).

 Appendix:

o Please supply a summary of all of the tests of assumptions.