GEOL2301: Palaeoecosystems

Objectives

In this exercise, you will learn palaeoecological techniques by applying them to a real problem. You will study samples of the Much Wenlock formation, a mid-Silurian limestone that crops out near Dudley, Birmingham, and produce a short report, in the style of a submission to Geology, entitled Community structure, environment and ecological controls on the Wenlock Limestone fauna.

This is a multifaceted subject: you have flexibility in what aspects of the research question you choose to tackle, and how you approach it. Aside from the rubrics (Links: report / lab notebook), you won’t receive a step by step guide. Don’t worry: this is an opportunity to develop your independent thinking.

Workflow

The course is structured around formative exercises that help you to make steady progress on your project as term progresses. Use these exercises to understand what you will need to do to produce an effective report.

• In a group, you will choose a slab of Wenlock limestone and record its taxonomic composition. In session 7, the class will pool its data in order to obtain a whole-class dataset, reconciling species that have been treated differently by different groups.
• You may informally discuss your data collection and interpretation with your peers, but must keep your own separate lab notebooks. Your analysis and written report must be produced completely independently.
• You should not ask peers, or use generative AI, to generate, rewrite or edit your content. You may ask peers for general feedback on your report's structure and writing style. We strongly discourage the use of AI, which we have found to reduce students' learning and skill development – to the detriment of the quality of work.
• After session 4 (), you will engage with the literature to produce an introduction to the report, identifying previous work and outstanding questions that might be addressed using the techniques introduced in the course. After peer feedback in session 6 (), these introductions will form the start of your final report.
• Your final report may integrate abundance and/or biovolume / biomass data from the entire cohort with detailed observations from your own slab – such as the way in which fossils are preserved. You will present a first draft of your report in session 10, in order to receive comments from peers. Should you be unable to meet the final deadline, this draft, which should be fundamentally complete, may be used as a basis to award marks.

Data collection tasks

• Sign up to a group by noon, .
• Choose one sample in class on :
• Find your sample in the gallery and record your group’s sample name / ID.
• In your lab notebook, identify and count the fossils on your slab. (See Blackboard » Michaelmas » Wenlock » Resources).
• Populate a new column of the class dataset with your group’s data by noon, .
• Present your data and make other groups’ consistent (in class, ).
• Prepare a report, ready to receive peer feedback in class on .
• The definitive schedule of exercises and deadlines is given in the course overview.

Backup

Don't risk losing your work; back it up, perhaps using OneDrive: your University account grants you 1 TB of storage. Concessions will only be granted for loss or corruption of files if you can document that appropriate effort was made to back up work.

Your submission must be formatted as a manuscript file that could be submitted to the journal Geology. The Geology instructions for authors detail size constraints and formatting requirements; the "Preparing your Manuscript" section provides links to Manuscript Guidelines and a Manuscript Template to help you format your submission.

Each table and figure should be presented, with a complete caption, on a single page of its own – either after the main text, or at a suitable point in the manuscript. Figures may comprise multiple related panels.

To allow submissions to be marked anonymously; please use your CIS ID (e.g. abcd12) in place of your name and affiliation, and as the file name (e.g. abcd12.docx).

Notice that the rubric awards marks for adherence to these requirements.

General approach

• Start to write your report as early in the process as possible – you can begin work on the introduction and background immediately.
• If you don't clearly understand the subject, and the hypotheses that you are trying to address, before you set out: ask.
• Understand what must be done by when, and schedule your time accordingly. How will you spend the 100 hours allocated to this half of the module?
• Good scientific writing often tells a story. Bad writing presents an incoherent list of data points and analyses, without linking observations to the bigger picture. Before you start and as you progress, ask yourself what conclusions you are hoping to draw and how each analysis or data point develops the narrative leading to those conclusions. What belongs in the report? What can be left out? What structure most effectively conveys your argument?

Introduction

Give context to the problems you are addressing by drawing on the primary scientific literature – science builds on past discoveries.

You should have learnt about searching the literature in your tutorials. Find useful sources by searching (e.g. Google Scholar, Web of Knowledge) for keywords, by reading the reference lists of relevant papers, and by looking at papers that cite an article of interest. Remind yourself how to access articles off campus.

To get you started, the following paper might be useful for the introduction:
Scott RW. 1978. Approaches to trophic analysis of paleocommunities. Lethaia 11: 1–14.

Methods

Clearly (but concisely) describe your data collection protocols and analytical methods. Include just enough detail that a reader could follow your instructions and obtain equivalent results – we don’t need to know what colour pen you used to record data. Consider any errors that may arise, how these may bias your results, and any limitations this may put on the study.

Results (observations)

Results belong in a results section, where they should be clearly and concisely described. Each figure or table should make a scientific point – raw data belong in a lab notebook. Lay out your results in order to set up what you are about to say in the discussion.

Discussion

Discussion belongs in a discussion section. This is your chance to apply your results to the research question. How do they build on previous work? Are there caveats to their interpretation, or do they point to a broader story you can build from the wider scientific literature?

Conclusions

These may take the form of bullet points or prose. Do not introduce new material here.

Abstract

Dig out your notes from your abstract-writing exercise in your L1 tutorials. An abstract is a ‘paper in miniature’ that expands on the title. Though presented first, it is often best to write the abstract last, as it summarises the rest of your report.

A cynical way to succeed at university is to work out what the lecturer is looking for, and serve it up to them on a plate. This assignment is an opportunity for you to demonstrate that you have understood how the concepts introduced through the course can be applied to a research question.

Your report should inform the reader about the community structure, environment and primary ecological controls on the Wenlock Limestone fauna, using relevant data and analyses.

It might be profitable to ask yourself this sort of question:

• How can the techniques introduced in sessions 1 and 2 be applied to the Wenlock? What sorts of interpretation could they lead me to?
• How do the taxonomic questions addressed in sessions 3 and 4 affect the questions I can ask and the validity of my conclusions?
• How can I use the taphonomic principles introduced in session 5 to determine whether the community has been transported?
• How can the concepts of functional morphology introduced in session 6 complement statistical analyses in building up a coherent picture of an ecosystem?
• What value does the class dataset compiled in session 7 add to my own detailed observations of a single slab?
• What aspects of the Burgess Shale case study in session 8 might be relevant to the Wenlock biota?

There are plenty more factors you might consider when addressing this topic. The art lies in deciding what belongs in the report, in the lab notebook, or at the bottom of the ‘to do’ list.