Experimental Animal Behavior - The Time Budget (2013)
Objectives:
- Prepare EthoScribe/Newton data
collection devices for ethogram of chickens - Class review of how to do a
Time Budget
- Use continuous/focal sampling
to construct a time budge for chicken behavior
- Use periodic/focal sampling
to construct a time budget for chicken behavior
- Graphically represent the time
budges from each technique in one or more bar graphs
- Understand the pros
and cons of each method
Equipment:
- Pen/Pencil and paper,
lab notebook
- Newton hand-held computer with
EthoScribe software
- EthoScribe
User's manual (on P: drive, for reference later), or Ethoscribe "cheat
sheet" (hand out in class)
- Excel, or other statistical
software (for use after data have been collected) and
Analysis file
Data collection:
- Today, you will collect data for an ethogram of chicken
behavior using two standard techniques for constructing time budgets. For
data collection, you will work in teams of two. Each pair of investigators
will check-out a Newton computer at the beginning of class for use in collecting
data.
- Since you have prepared catalogs for your 261 project, we won't do that
today. Instead, a data sheet for an ethogram of chickens has been loaded into
a Newton hand-held computer with EthoScribe data collection software. We will
go over that that as a group in class.
- We will observe chickens at Dharma Farm.
- The first task is to find a chicken on which you can practice both sampling
techniques. Locate a chicken. One person watch the chicken, the other use
the Newton. Start a new trial. Spend 10 minutes doing continuous sampling.
Switch roles so that the other member of the team is using the Newton. Start
a new trial. Spend 10 minutes doing periodic sampling. Try a 30 second interval
for a few minutes. Change the timer interval and try shorter and longer periods
to see what works best for you.
- After the initial trials, it is time to collect data. You will collect 10
minutes of behavioral data from 6 different chickens. Make sure you watch
a different chicken each time.
- Take data on 3 chickens using continuous sampling
- Take data on 3 chickens using scan sampling
Data analysis:
- Your task is to describe chicken
behavior using both methods and to compare how those methods differed in their
results.
- Use Ethoscribe's data analysis feature to analyze each individual chicken's
behavior.
- Transfer those individual summaries to your lab notebook.
- Use Excel to calculate average time budgets for chickens
observed using continuous sampling.
- Use Excel to calculate average time budgets for chickens
observed using scan sampling.
- Construct bar charts to represent average chicken
time budget using both methods.
Discussion:
- In your lab notebook, record thoughts and observations on the use of each
method.
- You willl have to write a lab report comparing these two methods and these
two data sets, so keep good notes on what you did.
- In a later class, we will go over a statistical procedure that will allow
us to test whether the two results are significantly different, or not.