Some of my peers and I are conducting a study of the preference (or lack thereof) of experimental animals for feeding on larger or smaller food items in what is intended to be a test of Optimal Foraging Theory. As far as I know it has never been done with this species. We've whittled down our sample size to animals that are willing to eat our food items of choice (n=12), and we plan on doing 3 different variations of the experiment. Is this potentially publishable, or is the experiment too simplistic? Does anyone have any tips on how to make it more likely to be publishable?
The most important question you should ask yourself is WHY are you doing this? Are you expanding the patch model? The predator-prey OFT model? If you're adding new theory, cool! Are you just trying to show that OFT works? This has been done countless times already, in different situations. Although I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to test (nutritional density, volume, etc?) I would imagine most low-hanging fruit (a adequate metaphor with OFT) has already been picked here.
Don't show that this oft-proven theory works just to show it works. Remember, models are useful tools for exploring biology; by themselves, they are not much, but as a null model or a way to shape your expectations, they can be quite revealing. If your organisms DON'T conform to the OFT, that would be interesting. What about their biology is causing this apparent "sub-optimal" strategy? What does the fact that they conform/don't conform reveal?
The most important question you should ask yourself is WHY are you doing this? Are you expanding the patch model? The predator-prey OFT model? If you're adding new theory, cool! Are you just trying to show that OFT works? This has been done countless times already, in different situations. Although I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to test (nutritional density, volume, etc?) I would imagine most low-hanging fruit (a adequate metaphor with OFT) has already been picked here.
Don't show that this oft-proven theory works just to show it works. Remember, models are useful tools for exploring biology; by themselves, they are not much, but as a null model or a way to shape your expectations, they can be quite revealing. If your organisms DON'T conform to the OFT, that would be interesting. What about their biology is causing this apparent "sub-optimal" strategy? What does the fact that they conform/don't conform reveal?
I agree with Andrew and want to add that I would worry about your sample size as well. 12 individuals with 3 experimental variations can cause problems down the line. You'll need to randomize the order you give the treatments and worry about what they've learned from one variation to the next. Try and find one crucial NOVEL piece of theory to test and focus on that.
I agree with both previous answers, you're jumping to methodology without even having a question, which is the most important part.
Also, i don't think an experiment can be too simplistic if it has interesting results and generates new questions.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Mathematics
- Statistics
- Sampling Design
- Sample Size