Find an experimental research article on a specific animal or protist. Your paper will not be like a Wikipedia article about “elephants” for instance. You will describe the research relating to the topic and interpret and summarize the research in your paper. These papers will be approximately 3 pages double spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font with a separate cover page including the complete bibliography of the paper chosen and your name and lab section. Please follow the rubric in your lab manual introduction (Biology 1BL S2021 Lab Manual Introduction-1.docx ). Information must be put in your own words. No quotes allowed, no copying the text of a sentence or two from the paper. Read, understand, and explain in your own words what you have read, as if you were describing the research verbally to someone. The intent of the assignment is to make sure that you understand what primary literature is, how to locate it, and how to access it when you have found it.
Rubric for Peer-reviewed article summary:
Title page:
Your Name, Lab section
Title of article, Date article was published.
Section 1. (5 points) Summary (synopsis) paragraph, not copy of abstract.
What did the researchers study?
Main questions? What were they looking for?
Quick summary of main results.
Section 2. (5 points) Natural history, background info on organism. You can use other sources to add to this part. Include sources in references.
Section 3. (5 points) Methods. How did they study their question? Elaborate.
Field experiment? Lab experiment? Comparative study?
What did they measure? How did they measure it?
Section 4. (5 points) Results. What results did they find? You may copy appropriate key graph or figure or table from the paper here, cite it, and explain what it means; (one is good.)
Section 5. (6 points) Discussion. Significance of research, why is it important (or not)? Elaborate on this section describing the importance of the results that were found.
Would you fund this?
Validity of the methods? Did they set this up well enough to answer the questions they were asking?
What else would you have done, would you change anything to make it better?
Were there any parts of the study that you didn’t understand or thought were unnecessary (explain this.)
Section 6. (3 points) Future direction. What else should they look at next based on results. Present some of your ideas with support from their findings.
Citation (1 point) at the end:
Author(s) Last name, First name or initial if multiple authors, in the order they appear in the original paper, Year of publication, Title of article, Journal name, Volume #, Pages.
Submit on Turn it in, and please don’t copy anything directly from the paper you are reviewing. Everything is in your own words. A Turn it in plagiarism score above 15% is unacceptable.
