Instructions

For this assignment, each student should spend a minimum of 30 minutes observing at least one living organism. This should not be an organism that you already spend a lot of time with, for that reason I will not accept assignments written about household pets – your dog, or cat or a friends dog or cat. You can observe organisms in captivity, so zoos, pet stores, the aquarium are okay – but it would be better to look outside if you can take a hike or visit the lake shore and explore what you see out there.

Take careful notes of your observations and be specific; try to find a way to collect numerical measurements of the physical traits or behaviors you observe. For example, if I were observing birds at a bird feeder I could measure the length of time that individual birds spend feeding at a bird feeder before flying away or which species of birds feed at the same bird feeder simultaneously, and I could take notes of interesting behaviors or characteristics of individual birds. You might decide to take short video clips that you can review to observe behaviors.

From your observations and notes, develop a specific question and find at least 1 peer-reviewed source and 1 other reliable source of information that can help you understand the traits or behaviors of the organism(s) you observed.

You will submit a written description of your observations, the specific question you asked, a summary of the sources you found in your research and a complete citation of the reference. The citation may be formatted according to the style common in your discipline, but it must contain at least the author(s), date, title, publication title or publisher, and the URL or DOI for digital sources.

Example of Citation Format

Scholarly Articles: Lobo, V., Patil, A., Phatak, A., & Chandra, N. (2010). Free radicals, antioxidants and functional foods: Impact on human health. Pharmacognosy Reviews, 4(8), 118126. http://doi.org/10.4103/0973-7847.70902 (Links to an external site.).

Credible Websites: Szalay, Jessie (27 May 2016) What Are Free Radicals? Live Science. Available online at [https://www.livescience.com/54901-free-radicals.html (Links to an external site.) ]. Accessed 2 February 2018.

Examples of finished assignments

Attachment are some good examples of papers written.