RESEARCH PROPOSAL PROJECT

These are group projects (2-3 students in a group). The project consists of developing and writing a research proposal in Animal Behavior. Students are supposed to pick an interesting research question (a list of suggested topics will be provided), do a literature search, find relevant primary research papers (minimum of 5) and write a review of that literature followed by a research proposal which would advance our knowledge of the chosen topic. At the end of the class, the groups will present their proposals to the entire class (10 min spoken presentation using Power Point). These presentations will be graded by all students (grading forms will be provided) for a credit.

Literature search via web of science

Suggested topics for the project (Please note that these are only suggested topics and you may choose any animal behavior topic you like)

Group project description (from the syllabus)

The project consists of developing and writing a research proposal in Animal Behavior. Students are supposed to pick an interesting research question (a list of suggested topics will be provided), do a literature search, find relevant primary research papers (minimum of 5) and write a paper that will provide a review of literature of the topic followed by a research proposal designed to advance our knowledge of the chosen topic. At the end of the class, the groups will present their proposals to the entire class (10 min spoken presentation using Power Point). These presentations will be graded by all students (grading forms will be provided) for a credit.

This is a group project so the first thing you should do is to form groups (2-3 persons per group). Once you formed groups, please give me the names of all people in your group before you start working on a project. Everybody in a group should share the workload equally. Each person should sign a statement that he/she equally contributed to the project. Each person will also be asked to evaluate the contributions made by other group members and submit these evaluations to me at the end of the class. 

Next, you should select an appropriate topic in Animal Behavior for your project. I will provide you with some potential topics (see the link to suggested topics above) but you can also select a topic that is not on that list. I should approve topics for each group and there should be no overlaps between the groups. 

 After you select your topic you should find and use at least 5 research papers. You should use only papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. UNR has an excellent library and most journals are available to UNR students electronically. YOU CANNOT USE ENCYCLOPEDIAS, WEB SITES, POPULAR BOOKS - only research journals!

 

You are advised to use web-of-science website (www.isiknowledge.com) for literature search - it is the best search mechanism. Once on the website, click on 'web of science'. Within the website, you will be able to do literature search using keywords. When you submitted your keywords, web of science will bring you peer-reviewed publications based on these keywords. You could click on the title of each publication to read the abstract. If you think that you would like to use that paper, click on 'find it' button. It will open a new window with links to full text of the paper. If no links to full text are available, click 'check the catalog for availability in the UNR libraries' and see if UNR has access to an electronic version of this paper.

 

All other details of the project are provided in syllabus.

Links to the journals that publish papers in Animal Behavior:

         

Behavioral Ecology: http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology: http://www.springer.com/life+sciences/behavioural/journal/265

Animal Behaviour: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00033472

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/

Ethology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1439-0310

Behaviour: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/beh