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Stingrays and Sea Dragons
I decided to look up the Animal kingdom specifically the marine animals in Blairegowrie  Pier on March 2020 while I was doing my scuba diving licensing. I did an observation around the pier for any marine animals. There were many fish but the most interesting ones are sea dragons and stingrays. I would bring an underwater table to document them if I can do it again.

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The experiment was hard overall because animals are not sessile like plants, but generally there is a trend of increasing species with time and area.
I only manage to complete wandering search and Nested quadrat before it was getting to late and dark, and the result was basically the same with the practical.
The best part is I stumbled upon an Seagrass octopus hunting during the night :) There were many more Crustaceans (Crabs, lobsters, Arthropods) Molluscs (Sea sails, sea slugs) and Echinoderms (Sea cucumber, star fish, sea urchin).

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Aquatic Plants in the shallow edge of a pond (hypothetical)

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Aquatic Plants in the shallow edge of a pond (hypothetical)

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1. Studying plants
2. Measured at a medium sized pond at a nearby park
3. Effort measured by coverage of the plant across the floor of the pond
4. Hypothetical but I would expect large coverages of algae especially in areas of the pond in direct sunlight. Some reeds may take up some space at their bases.
5. Perhaps another version of this would look at counting individuals rather than coverage and therefore focus more on larger flowering plants rather than algae.

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1. I sampled the number of bird species
2. This was a wandering search conducted in Yarra Park, 5pm 28/10
3.  Effort was measured by time, in 10 minute intervals.
4. The accumulation of species observed was close to expectations, with a large proportion of species seen in the first 30mins.
5. Next time I would bring binoculars as it can be difficult to identify birds at a distance.

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I recorded the height of the tree, the colour of the flowers and the stage of flowering. I recorded every Rhododendrons that I could find and see well enough to note the flower stage. I recorded 95 trees in total.
I measured effort by the time spent looking for the trees and the number of trees recorded.
I haven't been able to graph the data yet. However, if i was to do this again I would mark the location of trees on a map and revisit the same trees over a period of a month or a few weeks several times.

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Birds in my Backyard and Surrounding Parks

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Birds in my Backyard and Surrounding Parks

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1. What broad taxonomic group did you decide to sample?
Birds

2. When and where did you complete the study?
Completed on Wednesday 28th October, 1-2pm in Moorabbin.

3. How did you measure effort?
Effort was measured by the amount of time

4. What did you find?
Seed and mincemeat was strewn within an area and the species of the birds that came to feed on the resources were noted, and the time they did so.
A larger pool of diversity than arbitrarily expected was observed; those being, Pigeons and Doves, Corellas, Magpies, Thrushes, Wattlebirds and Butcher Birds.

5. If you were going to do this again, what would you change?
I had a thought that the fact I used bait as a means of drawing the birds, might have skewed the observations to favour the birds that were the most abundant, as the flock was more readily able to monopolise the bait. This may have ostracised less abundant but still present bird species who were unable to compete.

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2. Yesterday afternoon, Front yard/footpath
3. Wandering search. 30mins. Stopped after couldnt find anymore along the major lines. Would be far too much effort to comb through the grass.
4. 10 Dandelion, 3 Chickweed, 2 Crabgrass
5. Take some photos to compare with where they will re-grow.

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1. I sampled plant species (Kingdom Plantae).
2. I sampled my backyard using a 3 meter line at 10am  on 29/10/2020
3. I measured effort by the number of identifications of different plant species made and time I spent searching (10 minutes).
4.  in total, I identified 6 different plant species along this 3m line.
5. I i were to repeat this experiment, i would use a bigger quadrant rather than a line. i would also use repeat quadrants of approximately 1 square meter to gain an accurate sample of my backyard. Plus id get a field guide for different weeds.

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Number of dogs at Royal Park on a weekend

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Number of dogs at Royal Park on a weekend

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1. Dogs

2. Royal Park at around 3pm on a Saturday

3. I walked around the track once (around 10 minutes - 1.2km) and took down the number of identifications made - wandering search method.

4. At the beginning, I counted many dogs, which decreased in numbers towards the end. However, it was difficult to keep up with which dogs I've already counted because many of them were of the same breeds. Some were also highly active and would run around the grass/foliage, making it quite difficult for me to make out if it was a new identification or not.

5. Having a key of dog breeds would probably help speed up the process. I could also have a chat with the owners in order to get some info about the dogs (which will also help me keep a better count of dogs if I recognise the owner).

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2. Royal Park near the lake in the Native gardens section, between 11:30-11:50 am
3. Picked a spot to set up with clear   view of a wide area, then for 20 minutes recorded the species of every bird which flew into sight- producing a tally of the number of birds by species
4. 2 Australian magpies, 2 Australian White ibis, 1 galah, 1 little raven, 12 noisy miners, 1 pied currawong, 19 rainbow lorikeets, 4 red wattlebirds
5. If were to do again would do higher number of replications and perform some form of statistical analysis

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1) Insects
2) The study was conducted in my backyard, between 3:00 - 3:15 PM
3) It was basically a wondering search method for 15 minutes
4) I think I need some improving in this skill because I only found 7 different species of insects. Most species were found within the first 2 minutes.
5) I would probably instead use randomly placed quadrats opposed to the wandering search. I think the wandering search method is good for a general overview of species richness however, there isn't much to do with the data. Quadrats however would still allow us to see this diversity but also isolate areas to see how these species interact with each other.

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1) We sampled Birds
2) Survey was conducted at Royal Park at about 11am, on the 22nd of October (A sunny day). It was a stationary count.
3) Effort was measured in time spent observing (Measured in 20 minute intervals)
4) As expected, we the longer the survey continued the more total species were seen. The rate of new species discovery slowed as the survey continued.
5) I would probably have measured time in slightly smaller increments, and done the survey for longer - just to confirm the plateau as a trend rather than a chance event.

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Different dog breeds in the neighbourhood

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Different dog breeds in the neighbourhood

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Colours of Masks I see during a 4 hour shift

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Colours of Masks I see during a 4 hour shift

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2) Categorising each mask colour (more than 50% of one colour classifies as that coloured mask) then recording the time that they arrived using times on receipts. This was done during a 4hr shift at a restaurant in Hampton, between 5pm and 9pm on a Friday Night (typically busy).
3) The masks had to be determined by eye whether it was more than 50% a single colour. Then I wrote down their colour on their receipt because the receipt prints out a time, easier to keep track of.
4) Haven't graphed this yet, but there are 6 colours in total and looks like all colours have been spotted after around 2 and a half hours.
5) I would change many things, first of all, this topic because colourful masks are very popular therefore very hard to determine whether it is more than 50% a single colour. Even more so, I cannot request people to take off their masks to physically measure, can only do by eye, therefore highly inaccurate.

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1.  Birds were the broad taxonomic group sampled
2. I completed the study along a walking track in a patch of native bush along the Yarra Boulevard on October 20, 2020.
3. I measured effort via number of steps taken along the track.
4. I found the total number of different birds species identified grew quickly in the initial parts of the transect/wandering search but levelled off. Specifically, 4 species were found in the first 100 steps of the search with only 3 more identified by the end of the search (500 steps).
5. If I were to do this again I would more definitively lay out 'rules' for the study. For example whether to include birds that were only heard rather than seen. This would have provided more continuity in the study and therefore comparability between studies/parts of the study if further searches along the track were done.

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Instructions on how to contribute to this padlet:

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Instructions on how to contribute to this padlet:

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Here I will provide brief instructions on how to add a post to this padlet.

To get started, click the pink plus icon to the bottom right of screen. Give your study a neat title and upload a pic if you've got one, so that it will stick out from the crowd!

As you can see, I've included an example of how you might post your study (this example was based on my MSc research at unimelb). We've set it up so that you will present your study in response to the following five questions (one comment response for each question):

1. What broad taxonomic group did you decide to sample?

2. When and where did you complete the study?

3. How did you measure effort?

4. What did you find?

5. If you were going to do this again, what would you change?

To make comments, there's a text box icon on the bottom right of the post. Please stick to the ordering of the questions as it will make it easier for your peers to compare yours and other studies :)

Please don't spend too much time entering a response to each question, as you still have other things to do in the prac! One to two minutes writing a response for each question is fine.

Happy padleting!

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Stream diatom assemblages