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BIOL1007 Molecules to Ecosystems
Scientific Report Assessment
Submission details:
Format: 4 x A4 pages of text (excluding reference list). Please note any additional
pages of text will not be marked.
1 page of figures (½ page for each Figure, including caption).
12 point Times New Roman Font
Set margins to ‘normal’ which is 1inch (2.54 cm) on left, right, top and bottom
1.5 line spacing
Number the pages
Submission info: Save your scientific report with the file name: BIOL1007report_yourSID, e.g.
BIOL1007report_480284924. If you choose to put a header on your
assessment, please only use your student identifier and NOT your name for
anonymous marking.
Submit your assessment via Turnitin on Canvas.
Late penalties: 5% per day (including weekends) up to 10 days. If over 10 days late
(without an extension), the assignment will receive a mark of zero.
This assessment is worth 15% of total unit marks. The assessment will be marked out of 100 (see
rubric on Canvas).
In this assignment, you will write a scientific report based on Practical 4, Investigation 4.1, where you
measured the effect of environmental conditions (light intensity and wavelength) on plant growth in the
context of protected cropping, such as vertical farming. If you would like supplementary guidance on
how to write a scientific report, you can access the Scientific Report Online Module on Canvas.
Report Format:
• Title
• Introduction (including hypotheses)
• Results
• Discussion
• 1 page of Figures
• References and citations (using the style used in the Scientific Report Online Module on
Canvas)
Your report should contain the following sections:
TITLE
Your title should be an accurate summary of your investigation. It should be concise (not be overly
long), but still convey enough detail (e.g. what environmental variable(s) were tested, what dependent
variable(s) were measured, what species you were using) to let the reader know what your experiment
was about. The best scientific report titles are complete, descriptive and concise.
INTRODUCTION
You should provide enough background information for your investigation to give the reader
sufficient context to understand the report, the hypotheses and the significance of this study, and
should be backed up by reliable scientific literature (peer-reviewed). Think about why the data
collected is important for the scientific and broader communities. The introduction should lead into the
hypotheses.
Present your hypotheses at the end of your introduction. We recommend that you have a separate
hypothesis statement for each experiment (one for light intensity and one for wavelength).
Hypotheses should be testable and relate directly to the treatments you tested and the measurements
you made.
RESULTS
You must provide a written description of your results, which includes:
• The mean leaf surface area and standard error for the light intensity experiments
• The mean leaf surface area and standard error for the wavelength experiments
• The results of the statistical analysis
• The sample sizes
• Reference to each figure in the text (in consecutive order)
For this assessment, we want you to present your figures on a separate page at the end of your report,
don’t include them in the results section.
Reporting statistics
You will be provided with the results of two one-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs), which check if
there is any significant statistical difference between:
a. the leaf area of plants grown under different light intensities (high, medium and low).
b. the leaf area of plants grown under different light wavelengths (red, white and blue).
As part of your written description of the results, you should include a concise statement that specifies
whether there is a significant difference between your treatments, and then present the results of the
ANOVA in parentheses at the end of the sentence in the form (F(a,b)= XXX, p = XXX). If your ANOVA
shows an overall significant difference, you should then describe between which of the treatment(s) the
significant difference(s) exist, using the post-hoc test provided.
Note: we will not compare light intensity treatments with light wavelength treatments, and each statistical
test is stand-alone.
FIGURE PRESENTATION
You should present two bar graphs on:
• The effect of light intensity on mean leaf surface area
• The effect of light wavelength on mean leaf surface area
The figure presentation should adhere to the following guidelines:
• SE error bars are present
• No gridlines or chart titles
• X- and Y-axis labelled with units where appropriate
All figures need to be accompanied by a figure caption that sits immediately under the figure. The
figure caption includes the figure number and a description of the data being presented. It must be
informative enough so that the reader can understand the data without needing to refer to the written
description of the results. We expect that you integrate information on the data presented including:
• axis labels
• units
• plant species
• treatments
• sample size
• what the error bars represent
DISCUSSION
Your Discussion should include the following:
• an interpretation of your findings, including a statement addressing whether your results support
or reject your hypotheses.
• a discussion of the biological implications from the current study (supported by evidence in the
scientific literature).
• suggestions for future research directions (supported by evidence in the scientific literature).
• a concluding paragraph
Interpretation
Your opening paragraph in the discussion should provide an interpretation of your major findings. You
should state whether there were significant differences between treatments in each experiment and
whether these findings supported your hypotheses. Please do not restate your results, including any
statistical values.
Biological implications
Also as part of the interpretation you should provide a deep analysis around possible biological (plant
physiological) implications of the results from the current study based on evidence from cited literature.
This is not only a comparison of the differences or similarities between what you have found and what
others have found, but also involves analysing the biological reasons that explain such similarities or
differences. Discussion around methodological differences is acceptable, but the analysis needs to
provide an in-depth discussion around the underlying biology (plant physiology).
Future research directions
Research rarely stops after one study. In this section, discuss research questions that could expand on
the current work to provide further insight into how plants grow. You should give at least 2 ideas and
the suggestions need to be evidence-based using scientific literature. Justify biologically why these new
ideas can help provide new knowledge or understanding.
Conclusion
Finally, to end your Discussion, include a concluding paragraph that summarises the key findings in
approximately 2 sentences, and link back to the justification addressed in the introduction:
• Summarise the main findings in line with the initial aims, e.g. “In conclusion…”
• Give significance of study (what has it contributed to knowledge on protected farming)
Make sure you don’t include new content here.
REFERENCES
In this section of your report, you need to list the literature you cited (referenced) in your report. You
should include at least 5 scientific papers. You can only use literature that you have read yourself,
rather than merely citing literature that other papers have cited. Make sure references are formatted
correctly, both within the text and in the reference list. Please use the referencing style used in the
Scientific Report Online Module on Canvas. You should use literature from peer-reviewed journals, or
the occasional book chapter to support your work. Webpages are not considered appropriate
references for this report and should NOT be used.
WRITING AND PRESENTATION
For your scientific report, you should use appropriate spelling, grammar, sentence structure, scientific
language, and focus on its overall cohesiveness (i.e. the hourglass structure of a scientific report). Please
refer to the Online Writing Module on Canvas for tips.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Specific Leaf Area / Leaf Mass per Area: When finding relevant primary literature for this report,
you might notice that many papers will measure the response of a particular set of growing conditions
on plant growth using ‘Specific Leaf Area’ (SLA) or ‘Leaf Mass per Area’ (LMA). It is a slightly more
complicated, but more accurate, measure of plant growth than we used in this experiment as it takes
into consideration not only how big a leaf is, but also how much organic matter (but importantly not
water) is also in that leaf.