1. Which part of your paper should you create first? Graphical Results

2. What type of plot should you make if you are looking at the relationship between 2 continuous variables? Scatterplot

3. What type of statistical analysis would you carry out? Regression

4. What do you put in the figure text? Figure 1. Nine lakes in Wisconsin’s Northern Highland Lake District in late September/early October, Chlorophyll a concentrations are averages of a surface measurement and a deeper measurement for each lake. The regression is significant (p calc = 0.045) How many, Where, When, What, Significant?

5. What about data grouped into categories? Graph = points or bars with error bars Stats = ANOVA or t-test a n = 3 a,b n = 6 a,b n = 4 b n = 7

a n = 3 a,b n = 6 a,b n = 4 b n = 7 Figure lakes in Wisconsin’s Northern Highland Lake District in late September/ early October, Lower lake orders correspond to higher landscape positions. Silica concentrations for each lake are from the middle of the epilimnion or half the Secchi depth for mixed lakes. Groups that share a letter are not significantly different (t-test, p calc > 0.05). Error bars are +/- two standard errors. 6. Figure text

7. How should you start your written results? Summary Statistics: tell us about your data IN GENERAL Means and ranges: “Surface total phosphorus concentrations ranged from 0 to mg / L with and average of mg / L.”

8. What else do you do in your written results section? 1)Refer to figures 2)Describe what they show (beyond the obvious) 3)Are trends significant? Figure 1 shows the slight positive relationship between surface total phosphorus concentrations and surface chlorophyll a concentrations. The relationship is not significant (p calc = 0.75) and note two major outliers – Crystal Bog in the upper left and Diamond Lake in the lower right. A regression without these two points increases the slope slightly to but does not yield a significant result (p calc = 0.6). *HINT* Vary your sentence structure to avoid sounding like a laundry list.

9. After results, what next? Methods What are the three types of methods you need to summarize? FIELD LAB STATISTICAL *HINT* Only include methods relevant to the data you used!!!

10.How might you start describing your field methods? Basic description of your system: “We sampled 20 lakes in Wisconsin’s Northern Highland Lake District for; 10 were sampled on September 30, 2006 and 10 were sampled on October 1, All of these lakes are generally considered oligotrophic. Maximum depth ranged from... Average surface area ranged from ….. “

11. Bad idea for field and lab methods: A long-winded, cookbook, with irrelevant detail: “Back in the lab we used a pipette to measure out 10ml of sample into an acid washed test tube and then used another pipette to add 0.1ml of concentrated hydrochloric acid. Then, several weeks later we added 1.5ml of 5% sodium persulfate....” AND ON AND ON AND ON Good example: “Total phosphorus samples were preserved with concentrated hydrochloric acid and analyzed using standard spectrophotometric methods (Arnott et al. 2006).”

12. What to Include for Field Methods? 1.When 2.Where 3.Basic description of system 4.Type of equipment (12.1L Schindler trap, Van Dorn sampler) 5.What depths you sampled and why? “A lake was considered stratified if... If a lake was stratified, we sampled WHERE in the epilimnion...If a lake was not stratified, our epilimnetic equivalent was WHAT the Secchi depth...”

13. What do you include for lab methods? How you preserved/maintained integrity of your samples (acid, refrigeration, freezing) General type of analysis (fluorometry, spectrophotometry, titration) Cite lab manual for more details

14. What do you say about your statistical methods? Type of analysis, what data you used, and why –“ANOVA was used to compare surface chlorophyll a concentrations among categories of landscape position. Surface concentrations were used because samples from deeper depths may have been out of the photic zone and/or in the nutrient rich metalimnion—factors that could have confounded any relationship between chlorophyll a and landscape position” P values –“Calculated p-values less than or equal to 0.05 were considered significant.” Software –“All statistical analyses and graphs were generated using R.”

15. What do you include in your Introduction? Background/Rationale (CITE LIT) “Phosphorus is often the limiting nutrient for phytoplankton in lakes world wide (Kalff 2002).” Your hypotheses “I hypothesize that total phosphorus concentrations and chlorophyll a concentrations will be positively correlated in 20 northern Wisconsin lakes.”

16. Bad idea for your introduction: Vague Generalities: “The purpose of this paper is to study x,y,z.” “Phosphorus is an important nutrient in lake ecosystems.” “In this paper, I examine data gathered on the Trout Lake field trip”

17. Another Bad Intro Mistake Spending too much time explaining why we should care or on tangential background material. A paragraph on the negative aspects of anthropogenic eutrophication is TOO MUCH.

18. A good intro... *Clearly lays out the rational for all your hypotheses and integrates literature in doing so. *Explicitly states your hypotheses and tells the reader in what system these hypotheses will be tested *Flows nicely (vary your sentence structure!!) *DOES NOT sound like a laundry list *DOES NOT ramble or integrate information that is only tangential to your hypotheses or the system at hand.

29. Citing Literature What is required? –Enough to sound knowledgeable –3 new sources at a minimum (not including lab manual, 2 papers you have already read, non-peer reviewed sources) –Must have a minimum of one new paper –Can use textbooks or specialized books Where does it belong? –Intro, methods, discussion