elected Bicolored Tamarin (Saguinus bicolor) Do Bicolored Tamarins have more solitary activities during busy zoo hours than during non busy zoo hours?...

I need someone to help me with this assignment.

Making an Ethogram

Part one: Observation

An ethogram is a descriptive catalog of the behaviors of a given species. Basic questions about animal behavior come initially from observations. Observation leads to questions, which lead to hypotheses, which lead to predictions, which lead to experiments. You must understand your study species before you can begin making your ethogram. In its simplest form, an ethogram is a quantitative description of a species’s typical behavior. Constructing a useful ethogram demands time spent watching animals, taking careful notes, and making sense of the observed behaviors.

I will not give you a minimum number of hours to watch your species as I will not be timing you, however the amount of time you spend to understand your species will reflect in your Ethogram and question, so allow a few hours for observation time.Choosing a study species:You can use a wild animal of your choice this includes animals in your backyard or captive wild animals in a zoo. You are not allowed to use domestic animals make sure you know the difference before you put the time in.

You should weigh several factors before choosing the subject species for your ethogram. Variation in behavior among individuals is the rule, and is important. You don’t want to pick a species that does one behavior for hours (such as sleeping in Colobus monkeys or animals that pace all day). You will want the opportunity to observe several animals of the same species. So long as your presence does not change the species behavior, you should try to observe at the closest range possible (and always downwind from mammals) in order to pick up the smallest details of movement. You might need binoculars for some animals. Just make sure you have the proper equipment and techniques for the species you chose.

You should choose a species that can be reliably found and observed. It won’t make sense to study a boar. You must also consider time of year.

You need to decide on a study species as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the less time you give yourself to complete the project.

How many individuals should I watch?

The best way to characterize a species’ natural behavior is to watch as many different individuals as possible, then summarize their “average” behavior. If you only watch one individual, you will know a great deal about that individual’s behavior, but very little you can generalize. You must, therefore, choose a species for which you can observe a number of individuals.

In general, I’d like you to choose a species in an environment where you can watch at least 4 different individuals. That is a minimum number. You are better off watching 1000 different individuals for 1 minute each than a single individual for 1000 minutes.

I would want you to include these data with your assignment. Just a basic word document with ALL the behaviors you saw for each animal you watched. I would also like to see operational definitions for these behaviors.

Here is an example of layout:

Subject one

Running- with operational definition

Sleeping- with operational definition

Subject two

Foraging- with operational definition

Sleeping- with operational definition

Walking- with operational definition

Part two: Writing a research question

By watching your species, you will end up with an annotated catalog of behavioral patterns grouped in a coherent fashion that describe what a given species does in a given environment. With this information, I would like you to come up with a research question about this species and build an ethogram around your question.Once you have watched your animal and decided on the behaviors you would like to use, you can move on to part 2. For this part, you will build an ethogram for your species. You will understand your animal to the extent that you can generate questions. Note that copying from the internet will result in an automatic zero. This assignment must be completed 100% on your own.

Below is an example of an ethogram created by a student for Bicolored Tamarins. Notice this person use operational definitions and not simply verbs (i.g. walking, running, sleeping). One of the hardest lessons of animal behavior is learning to avoid projection (either of adaptive function or anthropomorphism). You don’t want to interpret what you are observing, you simply want to write down the action of the animal. You will need to write it so that anyone who sees it will understand the behavior. Although this is a good example, there are still definitions that would get marked off. For example, contact is the activity and in the definition. At what kind of contact are they looking (e.g. touching, biting, etc.)?

Once you have built the basic catalog with objective definitions, you can organize your catalog according to behavior types. In the list below, notice that this person separated the behaviors between social and solitary behavior to help organize the data they will be collecting later.

Ethogram exampleAnswer the questions below. Be sure to explain your answer in 2-3 sentences.1. Why did you choice this species? 2. How did you come up with your research question? 3. Why do you believe that these behaviors will help in answering the question you posed?4. If you were going to collect data for your research question; What would be the best type of data collection method, sampling or focal follow? Which behaviors would you collect via duration and which behaviors would you collect via frequency?

What you need to turn in:1) Initial list of behaviors with definitions that you wrote down when you first observed the behavior.2) Your research question with the behavior and operational definitions that you would used to answer your question. Make sure the behaviors are split into categories similar to the example provided.3) The 4 questions listed.