Essay Instructions: describe the PHYSICAL characteristics of The Snake River ecosystem from a mechanistic point of view.
You MUST consider ALL these topics related to the river ecosystem(s) of choice:
1. Where does the ecosystem exist geographically (latitude, longitude, altitude, depth, etc)?
2. What is the source of chemical elements (carbon, nitrogen, etc.) entering the biota of the ecosystem? How do building materials for the ecosystem enter?
3. How are these chemical elements exchanged (usually through food webs, gas exchange, etc.) between the members of the ecosystem?
4. What physical and chemical properties define the habitat? For example, depth, surface area, shape, temperature, altitude, salinity, oxygen concentration, etc.
5. How does this ecosystem and physical environment change throughout the year, from season to season? 6. What is the long-term history of this ecosystem? Lakes are temporary on a geological scale; mountain ranges more long-lived. Over the last 10 years, 100 years, 1,000 years, millions of years, how has your ecosystem changed? What future changes are predicted?
7. What organisms typify and make recognizable this ecosystem?
8. What are the dominant organisms?
Text: Begin with an introductory paragraph, end with a summary paragraph, no end notes or footnotes (all information should be found on the pages cited in your Literature Cited). Do not copy anything from any source. All information must be in your own words. Do not use quotations; rewrite information in your own words and cite the source.
Here is some more information/examples of the citations.
Literature Cited: five references of books, periodicals, and Internet sources actually used in creating your essay. One source must be your text. Be very certain that you have included all of your sources and have given proper credit. Alphabetize your references by the first author's last name.
You are not creating information; you are reporting information. Unless you are active in ecological research, the material you write will be the ideas of others. Your essays are literature reviews. Although written in your own words, your essays summarize and develop already published material. Your essays should have many citations to published works. Of course, I encourage you to evaluate and critique what you have read and to report personal observations; however, the purpose of these essay assignments is to encourage you to read the literature of Ecology.
Citations in the text: Use the author date format for citations in the text. Do not separate the author's name and date by a comma.
? Example of a text citation with a single author and the citation in parentheses:
The search behaviors of honey bees confirmed that bees do not use the information contained in the dance, but use wind-borne odors to locate foraging sites in the field (Friesen 2002).
? Example of a text citation with a single author using the author as subject:
Friesen (2002) demonstrated that the hypothesis that bees use a "dance language" to indicate distance and direction to a food site is false.
? If two authors, cite with both authors' names:
The search behaviors of honey bees confirmed that bees do not use the information contained in the dance, but use wind-borne odors to locate foraging sites in the field (Wenner and Johnson 1967).
? Example of a text citation with two authors using the authors as subjects:
Wenner and Johnson (1967) demonstrated that the hypothesis that bees use a "dance language" to indicate distance and direction to a food site is false.
? If three or more authors, cite with only the first author followed by "et al" and the date
(but list all authors' names in the Literature Cited section):
The search behaviors of honey bees confirmed that bees do not use the information contained in the dance, but use wind-borne odors to locate foraging sites in the field (Solomon et al 2002).
? Example of a text citation with three or more authors using the authors as subject:
Solomon et al (1967) demonstrated that the hypothesis that bees use a "dance language" to indicate distance and direction to a food site is false.
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Follow this format for your Literature Cited section at the end of the essay:
If it is a book:
Author's last name, author's first name. Date. Title of book. Publisher.
Examples:
Molles, Manuel C. 2002. Ecology, concepts and applications, 2/e. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Ricklefs, R. E. 2000. The Economy of nature, fifth edition. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.
If it is an article in a periodical:
Author's last name, author's first name. Date. Title of article. Title of periodical. Volume (if available).
Example:
Smith, Andrew B. and Charlotte H. Jeffery. March 1998. Selectivity of extinction
among sea urchins at the end of the Cretaceous period. Nature.
If it is an Internet site:
Author's last name, authors first name. Date. Title of Internet site. URL for Internet site (be sure to include the complete URL for all web pages used for your paper). Note, Internet sites vary, just do your best with author, date, and title but be very specific about the URL. Note: no date was given on the home page for the second (Rothman) example, so the date the website was accessed was used as the date of publication. The parent organization (NASA) is listed as the author in the third example; an alternative would be to use "Anonymous" as the author.
Examples:
Friesen, Larry Jon. 2001. Biology 122 Ecology. http://www.saturdaze.net/eco/
Rothman, Robert H. 2005. Natural history of the Galapagos.
http://www.rit.edu/~rhrsbi/GalapagosPages/Galapagos.html
NASA. 2001. 2001 Mars odyssey. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/
or
Anonymous. 2001. NASA: 2001 Mars odyssey. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/
________________________________________
Your final Literature Cited section should look something like this:
Literature Cited:
Austin, M. E. 1965. Joshua. http://www.palmdalelibrary.org
Friesen, Larry Jon. 2001. Biology 122 Ecology. http://www.saturdaze.net/eco/
Jaeger, E.C. 1950. Desert wildflowers. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Lewis, M.B. 1983. Interesting California trees of forest, desert, and city. Pasadena: Pacific Book and Printing.
MacMahon, J.A. 1996. The Audubon Society nature guides: Deserts. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Molles, Manuel C. 2002. Ecology, concepts and applications, 2/e. New York: McGraw-Hill.
NASA. 2001. 2001 Mars odyssey. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/
Ricklefs, R. E. 2000. The Economy of nature, fifth edition. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.
Rothman, Robert H. 2005. Natural history of the Galapagos. http://www.rit.edu/~rhrsbi/GalapagosPages/Galapagos.html
Royo, A.R. 2005. The joshua tree. http://www.desertusa.com
Solomon, Eldra P., Linda R. Berg, and Diana Martin. 2002. Biology, 5/e. Pacific Grove, California: Brooks/Cole, Inc.
Sutton, A. 1966. The life of the desert. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
