Thursday, May 29, 2008

Seabird Plots

The goal of the seabird plot work is to produce data that can be used to calculate reproductive success. I have 2 sets of plots. One is Red-footed Booby (RFBO) and the other is Red-tailed Tropicbird. (RTTR) For RTTR I have 8 seperate plots that total about 60 nests combined. In these plots I'm only watching RTTR nests. For RFBO I have 8 plots totaling about 160 nests. In these 8 plots I am only watching RFBO nests. There are many other birds and nests in my plots but I'm only collecting data on the assigned bird. In a nutshell, each day I decide if there are any new nests, new chicks or failed nests in each of the plots for the species in question. At the end of the season I will have collected data that includes how many total nests and how many failed nests. Using that data you can divide and find a percentage for reproductive success.

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