Studying Invertebrates

Introduction; Designing an investigation: Designing and setting up experiments and surveys; Types of data; Sampling strategies; Selecting independent data points; Asking questions. Sampling invertebrates: Conducting fieldwork responsibly and safely; Surveying vegetation; Measuring environmental variables; Monitoring substrates such as sand and soil; Monitoring water; Measuring physical attributes of a habitat; Sampling invertebrates from water; Sampling invertebrates from substrates; Sampling invertebrates from rocky shores; Sampling surface active invertebrates; Sampling invertebrates living in and on plants; Sampling aerial insects; Marking invertebrates; Keeping live invertebrates; Killing and preserving invertebrates. Identifying invertebrates: Marine invertebrates; Freshwater invertebrates; Terrestrial invertebrates. Describing data: Examining frequencies; Finding the average value; Examining variation; Estimating the reliability of the sample mean; Estimating population sizes and densities; Identifying clumped, regular and random distributions; Examining similarities between communities. Statistical testing: Choosing a statistical test; Testing for differences between samples; Testing for relationships between variables; Testing for associations between frequency distributions. Presenting your results: Creating tables and graphs; Writing up work. Some useful addresses; Appendix I Calculating statistics; Mathematical glossary; II Statistical tables; References and further reading.