Research is:

I will try to keep this in layman's terms as best I can. Here is a description of my research:

What I am studying:
I am studying the effect that habitat patch size has on the nesting success of ground-nesting grassland birds. In addition to this I am also looking at: edge effect, patch vegetation structure, and bird communities; but I will just focus on the nesting and patch size question for this post. I am using a ratio of patch perimeter to patch area (P/A) as an objective measurement of patch size and shape. For patches that are the same shape, larger sized patches will have a smaller P:A ratio. For patches of the same size, more regularly shaped patches have smaller P:A ratios; therefore, the core area of those sites is largest.

How I am doing this:
To study the nesting success (warning this is a little dry/boring) I am using 6 different grassland patches, located throughout Summit County, OH (the county in which Akron resides). At each site I am doing two 10-day nesting sessions, where I put nests out on day 0 and check their statuses on days 5 and 10. Basically, I am measuring predation rates: have the eggs been taken or eaten? The nests are artificial nests, a ~1 inch deep and 3 in wide hole that I dig, in which I place 2 unfertilized quail eggs. Then I mark out the location of the nest with a flag located 5m to the north of the nest. Now, there are biases related to artificial nest studies, which I won't address here, but they are still widely used to study nesting success due to the difficulty of finding and monitoring natural nests (which also has some biases).

What I hope to find:
My prediction is that I will find a negative correlation between nesting success and P:A ratio. What this means is that as P:A ratio increases the nesting success will decrease. In other words, smaller sites (or more irregularly shaped sites) will have lower nesting success (due to predation) and larger sites will have higher success. As for edge effect, I expect that nests farther from the edges will survive longer than nests that are closer to edges. This is because predators tend to frequent edges.

What I have so far:
So far, it appears that my predictions about nesting success and site size are correct. My first set of data shows that as P:A ratio increase, nesting success decreases (with the exception of one site that has a remarkably high survival rate in general).

What this means:
What this means is that resource managers who are attempting to conserve/restore grassland sites for use as habitat by birds should take into account the size and shape of the patch that they are going to keep/restore. Too small a patch will have inadequate core area and will serve as a sink (a "trap" where birds think the habitat is ideal, but have low survival rates) so management strategies should seek to maximize size. However, size alone does not tell the whole store because P:A ratio also takes into account the shape of the patch. Management should focus on decreasing P:A ratio and increasing size in order to provide grassland habitat that acts as a source (an area where birds successfully reproduce) for birds, rather than a sink.


Alright, you can wake up now.