We are asked to basically search and use data from the literature to answer a question on marine mammals. The question I am working on looks for any relationship between melon size (I was thinking to use length, but if other measurements are easier to find just tell me) and echolocation range (I think you might use interclick interval/click interval) in odontocetes (include maybe like 5 species? There must be the beluga if you manage to find its melon length). So basically as an example, you should find papers on melon length in tursiops truncatus and papers on echolocation in tursiops truncatus and you do the same for a 4 species, and then you make a scatter plot which shows if there is some correlation, and maybe do another graph to further support or disprove the hypothesis. Detailed instructions are found attached; additionally I made a template as to what to include in each section. I am not sure how this website works but please feel free to email me at any point if you have any question, I am more than happy to work on this with you step by step (assaker65@gmail.com). Additionally I attached an excel showing what I need to have at the end of the paper, I started on it already: it is basically a table showing whatever you found in those papers, doesn’t need to be specific to the topic. This table needs to be included in the appendix. Citation style is AMA. Max references is 20, min is 4. The rationale I would like you to use is the following:
“The U.S. Navy trains bottlenose dolphins for military tasks like locating underwater objects through its Marine Mammal Program. Recent reports suggest the Russian navy may be using belugas instead, due to their capability to operate in deeper and colder waters. This choice raises questions about whether the use of belugas might offer some other advantage. One aspect to consider is that belugas have a noticeably larger and more prominent melon compared to bottlenose dolphins, which could suggest enhanced echolocation detection capabilities in the former. Thus, my hypothesis is that as melon length increases, the echolocation range will increase.”
So now you can see why I would like you to include beluga in the analysis. See if you can find the length of its melon that would be great, if not then use maybe another dimension like weight or volume or something?
