Wildlife By The Numbers

Which flavor of sampling would you use?

In this episode of Wildlife By The Numbers, Grant, Matt, and Randy have a conversation on the different flavors of sampling. They begin with random sampling, then move on to stratified sampling and two stage sampling. Finishing up this flavor fest of sampling with focus sampling. Examples in this episode include snails and warblers. They even talk a little bit about their earlier tomato garden examples.

Episode music: Shapeshifter by Mr Smith is licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License. https://creativecommons.org/licen...

Matt, Grant, and Randy finish up the discussion on peer-review publication highlighting their process for selecting journals, getting the submission ready, the review and handling rejections. Randy describes the process as both an author and an associate editor.

From this episode:

"Randy, what happens after an author submits a paper? How how does that work from a journal standpoint?"

"Well, it goes through their process, and then the editor or the chief editor distributes it down to the editor in charge of the paper...

In this episode of Wildlife By The Numbers, Grant and Matt continue their discussion on writing a scientific paper. They share with us writing the paper backwards by starting with the results, what to avoid in the discussion section, the abstract, title, and realistic number of drafts. Is 15 or 20 drafts a realistic number of drafts? Listen in and discover the answer.

Quotes from this episode:

"One of the things I see often happen in the discussion is people want to talk about things that are way outside the bounds of a particular...

In this episode of Wildlife By The Numbers, Matt and Grant, a duo who has been co-authoring papers together for over a decade, give a candid discussion on publication to share your work. They have a lively discussion of how they write a scientific paper, and dive into the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion sections of a paper sharing how their writing was influenced by their professors as well. They have saved the abstract, editing, proofing, and deciding which journal to submit to for another episode.

Quotes from this episode...

"Writing is...

In this episode of Wildlife By The Numbers, Matt, Grant, and Randy talk about the importance of representative samples and why it matters in wildlife work.

Episode Quotes:

"...layman's terms, bias is when you're reporting something that's really not valid because either your technique or your approach has provided answers that are no longer representative."

"Some good examples of the availability is oftentimes related to the animal's activity patterns. And so during the time of the survey, for instance, let's say for snakes and mussels, they could...

In this episode, Matt, Randy, and Grant dive into a discussion of more in-depth real world examples related to precision estimates.

Episode Quotes

"...when you're talking about sample size, you're often doing this game of optimization where I'm trying to optimize precision with costs because I may need a precision of ten percent, but if it's gonna cost me a million dollars to get it, then we need to rethink our goals and what what we're doing because that's probably not achievable. And so it's this...back and forth between costs and...

In this episode of Wildlife by the Numbers, Grant, Matt, and Randy, delve into the importance of proper sample size in wildlife studies. They emphasize that an adequate sample size is crucial for obtaining accurate and precise data, which directly impacts the reliability of conservation efforts. Sample size ensures representativeness and precision, critical for drawing valid conclusions about wildlife populations.

Matt explains that without a reasonable sample size, it is impossible to obtain a representative sample, leading to inaccurate estimations. The conversation touches on how over- or under-sampling can lead to either wasted resources...

Shifting focus to sample size determination, Matt, Grant, and Randy explore the challenges and considerations in choosing appropriate sample sizes for reliable ecological research. They discuss trade-offs, budget constraints, and introduce the concept of power analysis for enhancing the reliability of ecological studies.

Quotes from this episode:

"In this podcast, we're going to talk about sample size needs. How many samples does a person need to collect to get a representative sample of the population? So it leads us back to this whole representativeness idea. If a person samples too few, then...

Delving into the significance of random sampling, hosts Matt, Grant, and Randy, use real-world examples to illustrate challenges associated with sampling, stressing the importance of random sampling for accurate representations of wildlife populations.

Episode quotes

"...my question for the group is, do you think, they can actually achieve their objectives with a sample size of one, with one transect inside a particular city. Do you think they can achieve that at the city scale?"

" Inside that rectangle, they're placing, camera traps to monitor species...

Hosts Matthew Butler, Grant Harris, and Randy Stewart set the stage for Wildlife by the Numbers emphasizing the importance of proper scientific approaches in wildlife ecology and sharing anecdotes to create awareness about the challenges and rewards of ecological research.

Episode quotes:

"Today, we're gonna talk about an issue that we often confront with biologists, particularly young biologists that are just getting into wildlife work and understanding statistics and science well, conservation science design of of studies, and that is random sampling and the importance of random sampling and why it matters...