PRACTICAL FIELD ECOLOGY: A PROJECT GUIDE

African Journal of Range & Forage Science is co-published by NISC (Pty) Ltd and Taylor & Francis What should I study? What is a Latin square design? Do you really need a mallet when using a soil auger? What is a slurp gun? What statistics do I need to report for different statistical tests? What goes into an abstract? As a supervisor, these are questions I hear time and time again. OK, maybe not the one about a slurp gun, but that is mainly because I work with large herbivores where a slurp gun (i.e. a device used to suck up small fish from crevices and holes) is basically useless. That aside, generally, when it comes to the planning, conducting, analysing and finally writing up of ecological research projects, many of us learn it one step at a time, or more likely one mistake at a time. When I started doing ecological science there were a couple of books that highlighted ecological techniques (e.g. Krebs 1989), but none that I knew of that provided a step-by-step layout of how to start, conduct and write up ecological research. This book, however, does just that, and does it extremely well. When I first flipped through the book, I was impressed with the wide range of topics the authors’ present and their extensive coverage of the different stages of conducting ecological research. Generally, books of this nature are limited to a specific aspect such as experimental techniques, scientific writing or statistics. In this book, however, the authors start at the beginning (e.g. “What should I study?”) and go all the way through the writing up process of scientific reports and manuscripts. The core of the book, however, focuses on well-established techniques used to sample both plants and animals in terrestrial and some aquatic environments. What you’ll find when you read through the book is that it is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students.

However, there is a range of tips and titbits of information that will be useful for even well-established researchers. Format-wise, the book is divided into six chapters. In Chapter 1, the authors discuss the designing and preparation of field research projects. This includes issues such as choosing a study topic, creating aims, objectives and hypotheses, practical considerations (e.g. legal aspects and time management), getting to know the literature and project design. This, in many instances, can be one of the hardest parts for many students. However, the student-friendly writing style should guide most readers through this process. Chapter 2 then focuses on how to choose a study site, the key features of these sites (e.g. vegetation habitats, climate, soil, water and topography) and how to measure these different physical and biological features. In Chapter 3 the authors discuss techniques that can be used to sample static organisms such as plants and some animals (e.g. barnacles). With regard to measurements useful in rangelands, the sections on quadrats, pin-frames and transects may be of interest. In addition, there is a good section describing forestry techniques such as recording tree diameter, tree basal area and growth that could be useful with regard to grassland–tree interactions within savannas.

Chapter 4 is by far the longest chapter comprising 140 pages and covers a wide range of sampling techniques for mobile organisms. These include techniques for sampling invertebrates (aerial, terrestrial, soil-living and aquatic), fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The range of techniques presented is extensive. For example, for mammals the authors discuss direct observations and the use of camera traps, indirect methods such as tracks, dung counts, hair counts, recording animal calls (e.g. bats), capture techniques (both live and kill traps) and marking individuals (e.g. hair clipping and ear punching). Sections for the other taxa are even more extensive. A nice touch is that the authors present both the good and bad aspects of many of these techniques. In Chapter 5, the authors address the statistical analysis of ecological data. This covers a range of standard techniques including data transformation, linear regression, ANOVA, chi-square, and generalized linear models. However, the authors also present richness and diversity indices, population estimation techniques, and statistical methods to examine community patterns and structure (e.g. principal components analysis). This section in no way replaces key statistic books such as Zar (2009), Quinn and Keough (2002), or van Emden (2008), but it does a good job of presenting things in a way that may be more accessible to students, especially those terrified of statistics. One thing I like is that the authors go beyond normal statistic books and cover aspects of statistics generally confusing to students.