PB2A: Scoping Out Scholarly Sources

I cheated a bit with this PB by using a scholarly article that I have studied for the purpose of Biology Lab. The paper is Golden eagles, feral pigs, and insular carnivores: How exotic species turn native predators into prey. An interesting thing about scholarly peer reviewed papers is their lack of truly clever and inventive titles. Scholarly papers generally explain the basis of the paper in the title.

The paper I chose discusses how exotic species turn native predators into prey, as is clearly stated in the title. The exigence for most scientific papers is for the pursuit of knowledge; the desire to understand why the world works in the way it does. Papers such as this one – Scholarly, scientific, peer-reviewed papers – Have many conventions of their organization that allows a reader to glance at a few sections of the paper and know what the paper is about. Just skimming over one or two sections of a scientific paper can tell you the background of the subject in question, what questions the paper will be answering, how the experiments will be conducted, and the results of those experiments.

Golden eagles, feral pigs, and insular carnivores: How exotic species turn native predators into prey is organized according to these conventions. The title tells you the subjects involved in the experiment and the main idea of the experiment. Below the title the authors are listed and below the authors’ names are footnotes that list the authors’ credentials and their work place. The first portion of the actual paper is a small bolded section called an Abstract. The purpose of this Abstract is to give the reader background knowledge of the exigence of the experiment. In this case, the Abstract informs the reader that the introduction of a non-native species led to the presence of a different exotic species that began preying upon the island fox who had been the major predator up until that point. “The presence of exotic pigs led to major ecosystem shifts by indirectly causing predation to replace competition as the dominant force shaping these island communities.” The last sentence of the Abstract summarizes the Abstract while also acting as a bit of a thesis statement. After the Abstract is the introduction which is a more in-depth explanation of the exigence that led to the experiment. The introduction also explains the question that is to be answered in the experiment. Once the Abstract and introduction are done, the actual experiment begins.

The rest of the paper is sorted into two distinct portions; Methods and Results. Methods is sectioned into five portions that explain the various methods used to conduct the experiment. The study area, type of capture, type of analysis, competition estimates, and the model used are all discussed at length in the Method portion of the paper. Evidence is used throughout the paper in the form of graphs to show a correlation between the number of eagles and the success of researches in capturing the native fox and skunk. The graphs show that as the number of eagles over time increases, the researches’ success in capturing the native species decreases which suggests that there is a smaller population available to be captured. Results contains numerical evidence to support the conclusion it presents. The result is also combined with a discussion, making it quite lengthy. The results verify the assumption that an exotic species can turn a native predator into prey. This was devastating to the native fox population – it nearly went extinct from predation as it shown in various graphs.

This experiment was conducted on the California Channel Islands. It was primarily observational, although interference was necessary to obtain an accurate count of the indigenous species. The researchers took samples from the Golden eagles to determine the species they primarily consumed to prove that the sudden decrease in native fox population was due to the appearance of the Eagles.

I feel that the results are the most important aspect of any scholarly piece. If I am reading a paper it is likely because the question intrigued me and I wish to see how the experiment will be conducted and what results it will produce.