Hello, I'm planning for my future research study on artificial salt lick.
The study site that I've selected for this study has been confirmed with no presence of natural salt lick, thus I plan to conduct camera trapping on wildlife that are attracted to the artificial salt lick established at this site (Let's call it Site A). After that, wildlife observed at artificial licks in Site A will be compared with those at natural salt licks in another forested area (Site B), in terms of visitation frequency, duration and group size.
For your information, Site A and Site B are far apart from one another, and then wildlife species composition are generally different between these two sites as well. Then again, natural salt licks at Site B was already examined in my previous study, so I plan to select the given licks as constant to compare with the artificial salt licks established at Site A (Treatment).
Therefore, I would like to know if it feasible to use natural licks at Site B as constant to compare with artificial licks at Site A? If not:
1. Is it better if I compare natural and artificial salt licks within Site B only?
2. Is it better if I compare before and after establishing artificial lick, in term of visitation pattern of wildlife, at Site A?
Thank you very much for your opinion and suggestion.
Your study can be very interesting! It will be very important to build in more replicates. I hope you can have 8 or more independents sites that are natural and an equal number that are artificial. If you only have site a and site b, then it is only a comparison of two sites and you can never be sure if any difference was due to the salt lick or some other factor.
A second approach would be to monitor several places, then add the salt blocks and keep monitoring. This would be a before-after-control-intervention type of design.
Read about replication and pseudo replication in study designs. Good luck!
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