supplement your photographs with an interpretive diagram
.
You can look at a lot of
anatomical papers and you will find that there are usually more drawings than photographs!
Don’t worry if you are not a good illustrator. You can do either or both of the following:
-
Schematic diagrams
-
Tracings directly off your photographs.
Discussion
It is in this section that you interpret and explain your results.
You will address the topic or
question in the title and introduction of your report. You will
interpret your results in light of
other species which you have either observed in the lab or read about in the
primary
literature
.
How to
organize
and develop your discussion:
-
Inter
pretation and
c
omparison: this is where you can compare your specimen(s) to
more and less closely related species.
You
describe your specimen with reference to
anatomical homologies in those other species.
-
Use existing phylogenetic information (where available) to try to
explore the question
of primitive and derived states in the evolutionary history of t
his structure.
-
Is the structure or system in question relevant to the animal
’s ecology? If so, how?
Think about feeding, habitat,
reproduction.
-
I
s there a fossil record of the structure(s)
or animals
in question? What are the earliest
examples and how do they compare?
-
How could you take this project into the future if you had
more
time/material? What
questions have arisen in your work that would make a useful topic of future study?
Figures
These are key! Your work is fundamentally
comparative
meaning you will need to make
reference to other examples that are more or less closely related to your taxon of interest. So
you are certainly welcome to
make use of figures from other sour
ces as long as they are
modified and have appropriate citation and attribution
.