Results section assignment
Due Monday March 7
The findings of many studies have demonstrated that the presence of commercially reared non-native honeybees can have negative impacts on native pollinators, such as bumble bees. This is largely due to increased competition for flower resources, but can also be due to disease and pathogen spill-over from the commercially reared bees. As both honeybees and bumble bees form colonies, competition for resources has been shown to decrease the colony size of bumble bees, and lead to the production of smaller workers and less new queens (i.e. decrease the fitness of bumble bees).
You decide to study this for yourself using bumble bee nest boxes (the equivalent of bird houses but with a much smaller entrance holes and you provide cotton for a nesting material inside each box). In the spring you set out 10 boxes in open aspen forest with no proximity to honeybees (no competition). And you set out 10 boxes in aspen forest adjacent to an apiary. In August you collect all your bumble bee boxes and count the resulting number of large colony cells in each box to determine the number of new queens produced (colony cells are empty wax balls which would have housed a workers, males, or; if large, likely the new queens).
Resulting data
Colony boxes away from honey bees
Colony boxes near apiary
16
8
18
10
21
19
17
7
29
13
25
18
28
5
21
3
20
11
15
10
a) What is your working hypothesis?
) Once you have formulated your hypothesis you will determine how best to test this hypothesis (how to summarize the data, and what statistics should be run to address it).
Prepare a results section showing the results of your data analysis using the same format you would have in Biology 1202, or Biology 1204 (i.e. start with text describing biological trend/s , then address whether the relationship was significant or not). The figure will follow this summary, complete with well labeled axes, appropriate summary, and a well-thought out, all-inclusive figure heading.
What to hand in?
Your working hypothesis
(followed by)
Results (your results section as it would appear in a proper scientific manuscript)
(followed by –
An appendix where you will attach excel outputs of analyses output tables (i.e. these are not part of your results section)