1
Report Title
[Make this direct and descriptive, avoiding clichés and colloquialisms]
Your name
Your institution
The date including year
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Executive Summary
[The executive summary provides an overview of only the most essential information. It
is to be read by people with no time to digest the whole report including decision
makers. Your executive summary must thus be informative, clear and succinct. It
should briefly outline the topic of the report, the background issues, the scope of the
study, method(s) of analysis, the most important findings, conclusion and
recommendations. This should not simply be an outline of the points to be covered in
the report with no detail of the analysis done or conclusions reached. 300 words
maximum]
3
Introduction
[This section provides context, background and at the end a clear statement of the
objectives. You could begin with one or two paragraphs discussing broadly the general
importance of wetlands in ecosystem functioning, ecosystem services, housing
biodiversity etc. This could be followed by a brief discussion of the conflict between
human development and agriculture or aquaculture, and the loss of wetlands worldwide.
In a subsequent paragraph, discuss the Canadian and particularly the Ontario context in
terms of water resources, wetlands and wetland loss, and conservation. In another
paragraph, you should introduce QUBS, its size, geographic and ecological context.
Finally you should create your statement(s) of objectives. Be sure to use citations from
the primary literature of governmental or NGO reports for all major points. This section
should be 3-4 pages or 900 – 1200 words total]
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Materials & Methods
[This section provides clear information on choice of sampling locales (both how
locales were chosen and where they are situated - e.g. “We chose eight wetlands to
represent the range of wetland types present at QUBS, ranging from large lacustrine
wetlands to small upland marshes …). It would be well to include an appendix of
wetland names and coordinates in an Appendix. You would then outline how these were
surveyed and what variables were measured (e.g. “Each of eight student groups
comprised of 4 to 5 members were assigned a single wetland. Wetlands were surveyed
on two separate days, 5 August 2015, and 6 August 2015 from 6:00 am EST to
approximately 17:00 EST. We measured a series of biotic and abiotic variables
associated with both the wetland and with the surrounding terrestrial matrix (see Table
X)). If you intend to focus on your particular wetland, then you should state that clearly
here. Mention all instruments that you used where relevant (e.g. pH meter, densiometre,
GPS model). Finally if you do summary statistics across wetlands then clearly state
which you estimated and which program you used. Use tables, maps or appendices
where relevant. This section should be concise and probably no more than 600 words
or two pages double-spaced 12 point font. You may wish to present the scoring sheet
that we sent you as an appendix]
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Results
[Here you must walk the reader through your findings in a logical and concise
manner. You may wish to include tables and figures to summarize your data so that you
can save space but you must still refer to these in the Results section. For example you
might say something like “Survey wetlands varied from X to Y hectares in area, and
included lacustrine and palustrine marshes, beaver swamps and meadows, and upland
wetlands (Table 2).” If you report mean values for some metrics be sure to include
measures of variability as well (e.g. standard deviation or range). Your Results section
will probably not exceed two pages or approximately 600 words, excluding tables and
figures.]
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Discussion
[This section is, in essence, the inverse of your Introduction in that you should start
with the specifics of your study and then broaden out into a discussion of the
importance of wetlands in Canada and globally, and the relevance of QUBS wetlands to
this objective. You should be sure to interpret these patterns and wetlands relative to
other wetlands in Ontario, citing the relevant literature of course. Thus, be sure to refer
to (and cite properly) other studies that have assessed wetlands. If relevant you should
refer back to figures and tables. At the end of this you should draw the Report to a close
with a series of concluding statements – either simply as the ultimate paragraph here or
if you wish as a separate section entitled “Conclusion.” You should be creative of course
and not simply regurgitate what I have written here. This section should be 3-5 pages
double-spaced or 900-1500 words total.]
7
Literature cited
[This section provides the full references for all of the articles that you cite in the
main text. In the body of your report be sure to cite all relevant points – on other words
this is not a Bibliography but rather a list of the articles, book chapters and other
materials that you actively cite in your work. The number of citations will depend on the
thoroughness of your research but should include minimally 10 papers from the primary
literature. Please follow the citation style of the journal Ecological Applications. Here are
some examples:
Journal articles:
Barbier, S., F. Gosselin, and P. Balandier. 2008. Influence of tree species on understory
vegetation diversity and mechanisms involved — a critical review for temperate and
boreal forests. Forest Ecology and Management 254:1–15.
Connell, J. H. 1978. Diversity in tropical rain forests and Coral Reefs. Science
199:1302–1310.
Books:
Crooks, K. R., and M. Sanjayan, editors. 2006. Connectivity Conservation. Cambridge
University Press, New York.
Book chapters:
Wiens, J. A. 1997. The emerging role of patchiness in conservation biology. Pages 93–
107 in S. T. A. Picket, R. S. Ostfeld, M. Shachak, and G. E. Likens, editors. The
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ecological basis of conservation: heterogeneity, ecosystems, and biodiversity. Chapman
and Hall, New York, New York, USA.
Reports:
Hollweg, H.-D., et al. 2008. Ensemble simulations over Europe with the regional climate
model CLM forced with IPCC AR4 Global Scenarios. Technical Report number 3. Model
and Data group, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany.
Be sure to be consistent in your citation style.]
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Tables and Figures
[You have two options here with respect to placement of figures or tables. Either embed
them within the main text of the report or simply append them as the last section of your
report before the Appendices. All figures and tables should have a legend, and all
figures and tables should “stand on their own;” in other words a reader should be able to
interpret them without reading the text. On graphs axes should be clearly labeled with
units. On maps there should be scale and labels clearly indicating major features of
political divisions. On tables all acronyms should be spelled out either in the legend or
as a footnote. Again all variables should have the appropriate units and please attend to
significant digits.
We append examples of a table and figure from one of our papers (Row, J.R., R.J.
Brooks, C. MacKinnon, A. Lawson, B.I. Crother, M. White & S.C. Lougheed. 2011.
Approximate Bayesian computation reveals the origins of genetic diversity and
population structure of foxsnakes. J. Evol. Biol. 24: 2364–2377):
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Table 1. Sample size (N), expected heterozygosity (He), mean number of alleles (MNA)
and allelic richness (AR) for genetic clusters of eastern foxsnakes (Fig. 2) in
southwestern Ontario and northwestern Ohio. Standard deviation is given in brackets
and populations connected with different letters for He and allelic richness were
significantly different. Fis was not significantly different and MNA was not tested. See
text for details of tests and Fig. 1 for distribution of populations.
Population
N
He
MNA
AR
Fis
GeoBay1
119
0.28(0.13)b
2.41(0.79)
2.05(0.54)b
0.03(0.09)
GeoBay2
41
0.36(0.21)ab
2.81(0.75)
2.40(0.66)b
-0.02(0.13)
Swont1
62
0.59(0.14)ab
4.33(1.61)
3.69(1.07)ab
0.01(0.13)
SWont2
134
0.61(0.13)ab
5.50(1.83)
3.97(1.10)ab
0.04(0.05)
SWont3
28
0.52(0.14)ab
4.00(1.13)
3.46(0.75)ab
0.05(0.16)
SWont4
142
0.53(0.20)ab
4.91(1.73)
3.69(1.27)ab
0.02(0.05)
SWont5
28
0.58(0.15)ab
3.83(1.40)
3.43(1.06)ab
-0.01(0.16)
SWont6
84
0.62(0.11)ab
5.33(1.72)
3.93(0.87)ab
0.12(0.06)
SWont7
47
0.50(0.16)ab
4.08(1.50)
3.23(0.94)ab
0.03(0.17)
Norfolk
64
0.32(0.19)b
3.25(1.28)
2.51(0.80)b
0.13(0.11)
L. Mich
33
0.45(0.22)ab
2.08(1.08)
2.04(1.04)b
0.02(0.18)
S. West
27
0.74(0.12)ab
7.25(1.76)
5.96(1.44)a
0.07(0.11)
M. West
12
0.61(0.19)ab
4.33(1.40)
4.33(1.61)a
0.03(0.14)
N. West
12
0.55(0.25)ab
3.83(1.80)
3.80(1.75)a
0.01(0.18)
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Figure 1. Current approximate range of foxsnakes (dark grey) based on Ernst and
Barbour (1989) and occurrence records from Michigan and Ontario. Grey dots
represent locations of one or more samples used in the analyses. Dashed lines
circumscribe western foxsnake locations that we pooled for genetic diversity and
differentiation analysis.