Draft 2/22

Introduction

For the course writing in biology students were instructed to create a figure representing an interspecific interaction. The goal of the assignment was for each student to write a methods section that could be followed by a peer in the class. The peer was ultimately attempting to replicate the original figure based solely off of the methods section. The replicate figure was compared to the original and analyzed for the purposes of writing a scientific paper.

For selecting an interspecific interaction subjects were observed around the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In the North East area of campus an interspecific relationship was observed between a dog and the dogs owner. This was a clear example of an interspecific relation, this relation would be the one documented. The observation of the relationship was controlled by designating an area of observation. Another control was time of day, the relationship was observed in daylight, a necessity to capture photos of the subject.