Guidelines for Paper Summary on the Trophic Cascade
Your assignment for lab is to read and summarize an article you have each been assigned (see class web
page to download paper; see below the paper that you are assigned). Each paper is a review paper.
Review papers summarize and analysis the results of several published papers on a particular subject. The
subject of the review papers we will discuss is an idea that goes by several different names:
biomanipulation, trophic-cascade, top-down, or food-chain theory.
Your summary for the paper review should contain the following elements:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Citation – At the top of your summary, you should provide the complete citation for the paper you
are reviewing. This citation should follow the format used in the literature citation section of a
formal lab report or review paper.
State the main objective of the paper and explain the idea (i.e. biomanipulation/trophiccascade/top-down/food-chain) that the paper evalutes.
Methods – Briefly summarize the criteria employed to select papers for their analysis. How many
papers were considered? etc.
Results – Did the papers reviewed yield the same or similar conclusions? If not, what proportion
of papers supported the trophic-cascade hypothesis (TCH)? What explanations do the authors of
this review paper give for studies that failed to find support for TCH? List any confounding
factors that may have resulted in support of the TCH but actually were the result of some other
cause. List alternative explanations (other than fish eat each other and zooplankton, and
zooplankton eat phytoplankton) for how manipulating fish could effect phytoplankton biomass.
Conclusions – Given the information above, how certain are the authors that this idea
(biomanipulation/trophic-cascade/top-down/food-chain) is an important operating principle in
lakes, and that it can be successfully used as a management tool to control eutrophication. List an
advantage of biomanipulation using trophic-cascade theory and a disadvantage.
Your summary should be no longer than 2 pages, double-spaced, with standard top, bottom and side
margins.
Read and prepare a summary for the paper assigned to you below. Bring to class two copies of your
summary and a copy of the actual review paper that you read.
Tuesday’s Lab
Brett&Goldman 1996
Burkes, Ashleigh
Butler, Joshua
Corr, Amanda
Davis, William
DeMelo et al 1992
Lynch, Nicole
Mohammed, Nafisat
Newman, Bradley
Orji, Glory
See next page for Thursday’s lab paper assignment/
Drenner&Hambright 2002
Hughes, Christopher
Hutton, Jacob
Koval, Alyxandria
Lewis, Kaitlyn
Hansson et al 1998
Pallaschke, Brittany
Parson, Adrianna
Post, Macie
Santos, Hudson
Thursday’s Lab
Brett&Goldman 1996
Aga, Elizabeth
Brown, Alec
Dahler, Blake
DeMelo et al 1992
Nease, Sara
Price, Daniel
Ramsey, Alison
Ruhani Tezengi, Arman
Drenner&Hambright 2002
Gloeggler, Mackenzie
Harding, Ellery
Kasmar, Nathan
Martin, Melissa
Hansson et al 1998
Sessions, Lydia
Slaughter, Tiara
Smithson, Tatiana
Vizuete, Kevin