Ecologists have a catalog of tools at their disposal when they want to observe populations of plants and animals in natural communities. They can use binoculars, live traps, cameras and even household items like Solo cups to find out what species live in a habitat, how many are in the community and how they may interact.

But when students sign up for Field Methods in Animal Ecology (Ecology 3000) at the Odum School of Ecology, they don’t just get a user manual for how to use those tools. They get an introduction to the tools and are then set loose to figure out their possibilities and limitations.

“My goal in taking the class was to get out into the field and see what it’s like to be a working ecologist,” said student Eryn Lackey. “In biology classes, you have field labs, but that’s just one day. This is all semester.”

“Labs also tell you exactly what to do,” said Maci Foster. “You follow instructions and, if you do it right, you get the right result. This class doesn’t tell you what to do.”

Out in the field

Field Methods introduces students to techniques such as conducting bird surveys, building and placing pitfall traps, using images from camera traps and temporarily catching small mammals in humane traps.

But the design of each field study is driven by the students, allowing them to apply what they are learning about the scientific process—making observations, asking questions, proposing hypotheses, designing fieldwork, collecting and analyzing data, and communicating the findings.

Throughout a semester, students use the 35-acre Horseshoe Bend Ecological Research Station off College Station Road to work in the field and analyze their results.

On a fall Wednesday, the group collected 20 pitfall traps they installed the week before—buried cups that collect foraging insects, spiders and other invertebrates as they crawl or hop along the ground. The traps are red Solo cups buried to the rim, filled with water and a little dish detergent, and covered by a disposable plate to keep out rain. From that simple equipment, researchers can trap a representative population of the bug life in an area and study the species diversity within the ecosystem. 

In this experiment, students placed 10 traps in a wooded area along the north branch of the Oconee River and 10 in a nearby grassy area.

As the students prepared to go out to collect their traps, Senior Lecturer Scott Connelly explained how to label each cup by its location and warned about the odor that emanates from week-old pitfall traps.

“It is not a fun smell,” he said.

Sorting the data 

Back in the lab, students began to sort through the water and leaf litter in the cups, placing each organism under a microscope to see morphological details to classify them. Looking closely at their wings, mouth parts, antennae and legs, the students decide whether each belongs to the order Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps), Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Diptera (flies), Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets), Araneae (spiders), or some other order. 

“This is a nice activity to get used to categorizing invertebrates down to the order,” said Professor Scott Carver, who designed the class and teaches with Connelly.

The class uses different field techniques throughout the semester, so the students get lots of experience with methods commonly used by field ecologists.

Not all the lessons come from success in the field. During the pitfall trapping, some of the traps got tampered with and destroyed by other animals—likely raccoons. The lesson? Unexpected things happen, and field ecologists have to deal with those realities.

“We want them to do some things that fail. That’s a part of field work, too,” Connelly said. “Doing something that does not work can be just as valuable a lesson as doing something that works.”

Bringing it together

Students are drawn to the class to practice field methods, but they also gain experience analyzing the data. As they crunch the data from their pitfall trap experiment—looking for the richness, diversity and evenness of species in the community—they celebrate results and help each other with software.

“I hope to use RStudio in the future, and my dad was always encouraging me to learn data analysis,” Lackey said. “I thought it was so boring, but it’s suddenly cool when it’s something you care about.”

While many in the fall section of Field Methods aren’t sure what their post-graduation career will look like, most are considering a job in resource management or sustainability in industry.

Lackey expects to work in some aspect of habitat restoration or conservation.

“I think this class will be helpful whatever direction I go. I’m already getting experience in the field,” she said.

And that’s the point, according to Carver.

While students enjoy learning and practicing with different research tools, they also gain experience with experiment design, data collection and data analysis. They even create a draft manuscript to experience the process of writing up research for publication. 

“By the time they walk out of the class at the end of the semester, students should have a good understanding of experimental design, field implementation and data collection, and they’ve backed that up with data analyses,” Carver said.