Week 1 Observing and Recording Behavior

Link to Lab Handout

General Expectations

Students are encouraged to use animal behavior videos they have recorded themselves. These should be 3-5 videos, each 1-5 minutes long, each focusing on a different individual engaged in a similar behavior. For example, squirrels foraging, fish feeding, a spider spinning a web etc. Alternately movies will be available inclass for fish aggressive behavior, parental behavior in birds, salamander mating behavior, Drosophila fighting.

Following a brief explanation of different Sampling and Recording Rules, students will work in pairs to create an ethogram for one of the animal options. Using Jwatcher (http://www.jwatcher.ucla.edu/), students will code the behavior for each movie of their species, and use Jwatcher to assess inter-observer reliability, summarize and analyze the data.

The JWatcher manual will be available in class or can be viewed before class. CLICK HERE

strongly suggested reading:
Martin and Bateson "Measuring Behavior" chapter 4 - 7 (pg 56-113) This book is on reserve in the library

TO BE EVALUATED

Every student team will create a folder on the courses server in which they will save:
a global definitions file (*.gdf),
a focal master file (*.fmf),
a focal analysis file (*.faf),
all raw data files (*.dat),
the analyzed result files (*.cd.res),
the summary (*.rsm).
and the sequece results file (*seq.res)

At the end of class every student team will turn in a 1 page summary, the details of which are described at the end of the handout.

Every student is expected to keep their own lab notebook and not rely on the notebook of a labmate.
Lab notebooks will be evaluated!
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