South Asian river dolphin
TERM PAPER
General Guidelines
- The paper is to be typed, using Times New Roman font, font size 12, and double spaced. Staple your paper. DO NOT SUBMIT THIS PAPER ELECTRONICALLY.
- Start with a title page that has the title, your name, Biology 102, and the semester.
- The second page should be the abstract. The abstract is an approximately half page summary of your paper.
- The main body of your paper should start on the third page.
- Identify each species mentioned in your paper by its scientific name (e.g. Quercus virginiana) and, if it has one, its common English name (e.g. Southern Live Oak) at least once each in your paper. Be sure to write these properly. You may use either the scientific or English common name at your discretion elsewhere.
- Length of your paper must be 1200 words minimum. This total does NOT include the title page and reference page, but DOES include your Abstract. Do not copy and paste sentences into your text.
- You may use direct quotation from a source only ONCE; the quotation may not exceed three sentences in length.
Figures
- Insert at least one picture (color is nice, black and white is acceptable) of your species in your report. Pictures are easily found on the Internet.
- Insert a range or distribution map(s).
- Pictures and maps must be labeled consecutively as Figures and have captions. They must be cited in the paragraphs of your text. See the following pages for an example.
References
- Your References Cited will be in Scientific Style (see examples below). DO NOT use MLA, APA, or any other reference style. Failure to list your references in scientific style will result in points deducted.
- You must use at least four independent references. Internet references are acceptable (Wikipedia, IUCN Red Book entries, the Nature Conservancy, United States Geological Survey-Non-indigenous Aquatic Species, etc.). I would like ONE of the four references to be from a scientific journal paper. Assertions of fact in your text must be referenced. Note: scientific papers come from scientific journals; I will discuss in class how to find and recognize them. An excellent resource for finding scientific journals is to use Google Scholar as a search engine.
- A paper, book, or website with one author is cited by last name and year. If there are two authors cite both names, if there are three or more, use the first author and et al. (from et al., and the others). Examples:
Hoffman (2011) predicted the distribution of the least weasel throughout the Great Plains.
Currently there are several species of carnivores that expanding their range through Nebraska (Hoffman and Genoways 2006).
Predictors of establishment success and spread of invasive species in Florida appear to idiosyncratic for a given taxa (Allen et al. 2013).
- A separate, alphabetical References Cited must be appended to the end of the report. See examples below.
Specific Guidelines
The body of your paper must include the following five sections make sure to include the section headings (ie. Description, Distribution, etc.):
- Description – In this section provide an introduction to the species and describe the natural history of the species. Information should include physical appearance, diet, reproduction, habitat, predators/parasites, behavior, home range, population dynamics, etc
- Distribution – in this section you need to give a through description of the species current distribution and discuss if the distribution has changed from its historical distribution (ultimately if a species in endangered then its logical to assume that it currently doesn’t occur everywhere that it used to). You should also reference your distribution map in this section.
- Conservation status – In this section you will need to list what the IUCN status of your species is. Also, you will need to provide an in depth discussion of the history and reason for its decline (don’t just list the reasons, provide some explanation). For instance, if one of the reasons for decline is habitat destruction, tell why and where the habitat is being destroyed? Finally you will need to provide a current estimate of the species population size.
- Protection – In this section you will need to discuss what is being done to protect the species and/or help it recover. What are local governments/wildlife agencies/activist groups/zoos doing? What kind of laws protect the species, if any?
- Conclusion -What characteristics of this species made it likely to do poorly in a human-dominated world? What is your gut feeling or best guess as to what the future has in store for this species.
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