Experimental Animal Behavior - The Time Budget (2013)

Objectives:

  1. Prepare EthoScribe/Newton data collection devices for ethogram of chickens - Class review of how to do a Time Budget
  2. Use continuous/focal sampling to construct a time budge for chicken behavior
  3. Use periodic/focal sampling to construct a time budget for chicken behavior
  4. Graphically represent the time budges from each technique in one or more bar graphs
  5. Understand the pros and cons of each method

Equipment:

  1. Pen/Pencil and paper, lab notebook
  2. Newton hand-held computer with EthoScribe software
  3. EthoScribe User's manual (on P: drive, for reference later), or Ethoscribe "cheat sheet" (hand out in class)
  4. Excel, or other statistical software (for use after data have been collected) and Analysis file

Data collection:

Data analysis:

  1. Your task is to describe chicken behavior using both methods and to compare how those methods differed in their results.
  2. Use Ethoscribe's data analysis feature to analyze each individual chicken's behavior.
  3. Transfer those individual summaries to your lab notebook.
  4. Use Excel to calculate average time budgets for chickens observed using continuous sampling.
  5. Use Excel to calculate average time budgets for chickens observed using scan sampling.
  6. Construct bar charts to represent average chicken time budget using both methods.

Discussion: