e ., 5 references total ). W r i t i n g

This assignment has two main components:

1) Documentation of the behavior: You need to write a short descriptive summary of the
observations of animal behavior in San Diego city that led you to your focal topic and focal literature paper, and include some video
and/or photo recordings of the behavior. These don’t necessarily have to be high quality—you
won’t be evaluated on the quality of level of professionalism of the videos or photos themselves.
However, if you are able to record a very interesting or unusual behavior, that is a fantastic
outcome, and could be used to help in the possible outreach component of the assignment. But
for your evaluation in the class, you just need to provide some sort of documentation of the event
and a description. The description should be clear, concise, and free of errors, but the writing
here won’t be evaluated with the higher standard we will apply to your essay. You should put the
description in the same Word document in which you write your essay, as a separate section after
the references. You can embed photos in the document itself, but upload any videos you took of
the behavior to google drive and embed links to these files in the description. Make sure the link
sharing is turned on.

2) The essay Once you have your focal paper from the literature, your assignment is write an
explanatory essay that elaborates on the behavior and the research that went in to discovering it.
Your article must present a clearly organized, logically sound, and compelling narrative
concerning the specific animal and behavior in the literature, and also incorporate some
descriptions of your own observations that led you to that topic. You must have at least four
other references from the scientific literature that provide the background material you
summarize, in addition to your focal paper (i.e., 5 references total). Your article should be
written in a journalistic style directed towards the general public (not directed towards specific
segments of the scientific community as is done in a peer-reviewed science paper). Your article
should be between ~800-1200 words (this is about 2 single-spaced pages with normal margins
and 12 pt font), not including the title or list of references. The goal of your article should be to
provide your audience with the background on the general concepts involved, discuss the
particulars of the behavior (this is where you could incorporate mentions of your own
observation), explain in a general way how the researchers obtained their results, discuss the
broader implications of the focal paper, and talk about any details or questions that are still
unresolved or controversial. Your main focal paper and your other four references should be
listed at the end of a paper in a “References” section. Feel free to include any figures,
illustrations, or tables with the appropriate captioning and labeling. The title, figures, and
references do not count against the word length restriction.