Students each year join Operation Wallacea researchers in various research locations around the world. We are in the field from June to August completing long-term biodiversity research projects. Some participants choose to complete independent research projects ranging from the Internal Assessment level through to Masters level dissertations.
Not all who are wishing to use data and produce these reports are able to come on one of the research expeditions. Operation Wallacea have made available some of our datasets to be used by students wanting to complete a number of different independent research projects across a range of syllabuses.
The data we can offer can be used for a wide range of independent projects and support can be tailored to suit each school’s specific syllabus needs. These include but are not limited to:
• Extended Essays, Group 4 Projects and Database Investigations for the IB programme
• EPQs for England and some other parts of the UK
• Assignment Tasks for the Advanced Higher (SQA)
• Extended Essays for the Welsh Baccalaureate
• AP Research Projects
• Independent research projects towards the Higher School Certificate (ANC)
If the school’s projects or syllabus are not listed here, please still fill in an Expression of Interest form and get in touch to arrange a consultation as these datasets are flexible.
The first stage is for the teacher supervising the projects to arrange a free online meeting with the Operation Wallacea who will explain how the databases can be used for asking a series of research questions. If the databases are going to work for independent research projects for your school then the teacher forwards the information to the students. Note individual students can use this approach or entire class groups because the data sets are so large that each one allows multiple research questions to be asked.
Interested students then select the data set on which they want to work and can complete a form to reserve their access to their preferred data set. This form also requires the student to sign an agreement that commits them not to publish or copy any of the data provided. These are raw unpublished data sets which will be being used for future scientific publications in peer reviewed journals. A group of students from a school can all work on the same data set or they can be spread over all the different data sets.
The data set selected will be sent to the students accompanied by a recorded lecture from an Operation Wallacea researcher, in which they will set the context of the data collected. This will include information on the ecology of the site, the survey techniques used and the possible analysis and applications.
After the students have had time to consider how they would like to approach their independent research project (i.e. a specific topic they would like to focus on or research question they would like to ask), the school can book in a live Question & Answer session with the researcher/scientist for the project. This is an opportunity for the students to ask any questions they have about the project in general and how to get the best out of their own independent project.
Coral reefs are one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet, supporting hundreds of millions of people with food and livelihoods. But they are at risk of being completely lost thanks to impacts including global climate change, overfishing and pollution. Corals are the ecosystem architects of coral reefs, but they are fragile and grow extremely slowly. In recent decades we have seen massive declines in the abundance of corals and, if this continues, the incredible biodiversity reefs support will be lost forever. A healthy fish population is one of the best ways to protect the corals, by ensuring natural ecosystem processes such as herbivory are able to take place. Scientists and conservationists studying coral reefs will therefore often focus on two key areas: (1) the benthic community – the technical term for what is living on the surface of the reef itself (e.g. corals, seaweed, sponges), and (2) the fish community. In the Caribbean, Operation Wallacea scientists in Honduras have been collecting data on these two areas for almost 10 years. Students will have access to data showing changes in benthic and fish communities over time, and also between different sites.
Example questions:
In Europe, agricultural landscapes often possess great conservation value and traditional farming methods can actually promote, rather than be detrimental to, biodiversity. In the Tarnava Mare region of Transylvania the landscape is formed from a mosaic of grasslands, hay meadows, crop fields, pastures and woodlands. This diversity in landscape gives rise to a huge diversity of flora and fauna, with over 150 bird species recorded across the region. Given their relative ease to study, bird diversity is often used an indicator of overall diversity – and so conservation value – of an area. Opwall researchers have been collecting bird point count data from eight villages across the Tarnava Mare region annually since 2013. Students will be able to use this data to answer a number of questions relating to bird community composition as well as looking at spatial and temporal trends.
Example questions:
Juvenile and sub-adult green turtles (Chelonia mydas) feed exclusively on sea grasses, with large numbers of turtles aggregating around the same feeding ground. These concentrations of turtles in shallow water close to shore are very accessible for tourism. However, if not properly regulated, “swim with turtle” based tourism then large can result in chronic stress and poor health of the turtles. An exponential rise in the number of tourists snorkelling with green turtles in Akumal Bay in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico resulted in stress related behaviour and a decline in health in the turtles. The Operation Wallacea turtle behaviour project in Akumal started in 2014 and aimed to investigate the impact of the number of tourists and behaviour of tourists on turtle activity budgets and rates of stress related behaviour and the findings of the study were used to produce guidelines for the regulation of snorkel-based tourism in Akumal Bay. Following the creation of a new marine protected area (MPA) and strict regulations for snorkel tours in 2017, the turtle behavioural data was used to assess the efficacy of this MPA. Each summer from 2014-2019, all turtles in the bay were identified based on unique markings on their head and carapace. Data were collected while snorkelling in the bay using focal animal sampling with continuous recording, whereby an individual turtle was followed for a 20-minute period during which their behaviour was recorded in real time based on pre-defined behavioural categories. Two 20-minute focal samples were collected on different turtles each hour and efforts were made to balance data collection across individual turtles each day. The number of tourists within a 5-meter radius of the turtle were recorded throughout the sample along with the behaviour of each tourist. Any attempts of tourists to approach or interact with the turtle were recorded based on the pre-defined categories. The resultant 6-year data set collected on over 100 different turtles can be used to answer a wide range of research questions
Example questions:
Human-Wildlife Conflict is a hot topic in conservation, and will become increasingly challenging as humans and animals compete for areas. In a Big-5 reserve in South Africa, humans live and work in a reserve in close proximity to animals such as lions, elephants, and other herbivores and is a model for future conservation in Africa. In addition to houses, there are public roads which cut through the reserve, causing direct conflict such as mortality, and indirect conflict where traffic can change animal behavior. We set up a camera-trapping study to look at some of the interactions between carnivore species such as lions and jackal which may benefit from hunting and scavenging on the roads, and also how herbivore behavior may change in response to different disturbances by people. Our camera study used more than 30 cameras which were active over two years taking hundreds of thousands of photos, so this massive dataset can easily be split to answer any number of questions related to how animals and people use the landscape in relation to each other. Students will be able to use our data of each sighting which lists date, time, camera number and animal species seen, as well as the categorical data for each camera site (habitat type/road type/traffic volume etc.).
Example questions:
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