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Michael L Draney
Faculty
University of WisconsinGreen Bay
Department of Natural Applied Sciences
Green Bay, Wisconsin
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| Developing an optimal Rapid Assessment Protocol for ground-accessible macro-invertebrates. |
| Author(s) |
Michael L Draney |
| Info |
Talk category:
Ecology |
| Abstract |
Development of a Rapid Assessment Protocol (RAP) is an exercise in optimizing two antagonistic goals: Efficiency and statistical rigor. RAP’s in wide use by arachnologists today are highly efficient means of accumulating species records at a site, but comparison of data between sites or over time is problematic for at least three reasons. First, lack of randomized replication, which allows statistical comparisons of response variables across sites or over time. Second, lack of a standard sampling effort and standardized area sampled, both of which may have a large effect on total assemblage richness. Third, lack of a standard plot size sufficient to integrate microhabitat variation but small enough to ensure intensive sample effort. I have been developing an RAP that incorporates these critical experimental design features while sacrificing as little efficiency as possible. The protocol is designed so that two or more collectors, including inexperienced collectors, can take a standardized set of samples for one site in one reasonable work day. The ground-accessible fauna of any trail-accessible, walkable site of at least 50 x 50 m (0.25 ha) is sampled by intensive collection of at least three circular 0.01 ha plots randomly located on an easily surveyed grid plan. Each plot is sampled by two time-constrained methods: one hour of vegetation sampling and two hours of rapid field sieving of leaf litter. This RAP was specifically developed to enable one-day comparative sampling of tropical forest sites, but is also being tested in a variety of temperate habitat types. |
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