How can climate change affect the phenology of plants

Topic: How can climate change affect the phenology of plants
Answer all of these

1. What is the subject of the paper you have chosen, and what is the big question driving this study? To answer this in a paragraph, you are going to do some work defining terms and concepts.
   After you've written this paragraph, go to the beginning and write a 1-sentence summary of it. What would you like the reader to take from this introduction? this is the topic sentence of the paragraph, and make it clear to yourself and the grader by starting with "Topic sentence:" did you already have a great topic sentence? I suspect less than one in a hundred already had a great topic sentence, but if you did, you can just label what you already had written.
   This is an example of a topic sentence from a paper on a different topic, not climate and phenology:
   Luther, D., & Baptista, L. (2010). Urban Noise and the Cultural Evolution of Bird Songs. Proceedings: Biological Sciences, 277(1680), 469–473.
   Weaker topic sentence: Luther and Baptista (2010) did a study on dialects in White Crowned sparrows in and around San Francisco.
   Stronger topic sentence for an introductory paragraph on the paper above: "As humans change the environment, animal traits evolve, including the sounds they produce, in response." The rest of the paragraph would define anthropogenic evolution, what birdsong dialects are, and finish with the question Luther and Baptista address, whether dialects had changed over the 40 years they had been recording them in and out of San Francisco.
2. What question did the authors try to answer, and why do they and you (if you do) think this is an important question? this isn't the general question or topic, but the specific question the experiment addressed.

After you've written this paragraph, go to the beginning and write a 1-sentence summary of it. What would you like the reader to take from this introduction? this is the topic sentence of the paragraph, but make it clear to yourself and the grader by starting with "Topic sentence:" did you already have a great topic sentence? I'm hoping some of us already did have a good topic sentence, and if you did, you can just label what you already had written.
Now conclude this paragraph with a sentence on the kind of study it was (manipulative or observational experiment, analysis of long-term dataset, citizen science or crowdsourced dataset, etc.). This will transition to the methods you will summarize next.

3. What did the researchers do? Here you describe the methods of the study, what the researcher(s) did, and what kinds of data they collected. This can be challenging of course because you aren't experienced researchers and don't know the statistical techniques beforehand, but remember that this is not a detailed summary, rather a description in your own words. Make sure the reader can understand how the study was carried out, even though many details have to be omitted. Were trees planted for this study, or were naturally occurring trees observed? Were the observations just over one or a few seasons of this study, or taken by these researchers or other sources over a long period of time? What measurements were taken, and what relationships (effect of x on y was tested) were examined? Describe as much as you can as simply as you can. Don't write a lot, stay close to 150 words, the length of this paragraph. 200 max.
4. What do you think is the most important result of the study, and what figure or table is used to present that result in the paper? Your job here is to explain that graph or table from the results (clearly identify which figure or table you will explain so the reader can follow along and evaluate how well you can explain it). When you explain a graph, first explain what the axes are (what are your explanatory and response variables if it's that kind of graph, or what distributions of variables are being shown)? Relate the graph or table to the question(s) you identified in the second paragraph you wrote. How would this graph look if the prediction or hypothesis were supported, or not supported, and what does the graph or table show?

What are the other results the authors report, and what are their main conclusions?

This section is probably going to take 2 paragraphs, but maybe can fit in one. Can you summarize the results in one sentence? Try your best, and put that sentence at the start of this section, as usual identify it with "Topic sentence:"

5. Did these results answer the question or support the hypothesis being tested? First summarize what the authors conclude, and if you agree or not.

Did the authors identify any weaknesses or limitations of their study? Did they suggest a follow up experiment that could address that weakness or limitation.

Can you identify weaknesses, or ways you disagree with the authors’ conclusions. Can you suggest a feasible follow-up? When I say feasible, it doesn't mean you need a detailed proposal with a budget, but you will be evaluated on whether your proposed study might be possible to carry out with one or a small group of researchers, and technologies that exist today (ie don't say "we'll grow forests under warm and cold winters and see when they leaf out" because it take >100 years to 'grow a forest' and you can't manipulate winter temperatures, but maybe you can take observations in areas that vary naturally….)

Each of the two prompts above will probably take a paragraph. As always, after writing each paragraph, see if you can you summarize the your conclusion in one sentence ("The greatest weakness is…" "The results support the hypothesis that..")? Try your best, and put that sentence at the start of each paragraph, as usual identify it with "Topic sentence:"

6. Is there anything you'd like to add about this study? What was new or surprising to you from reading this paper? What did you learn about phenology that you will take away from this assignment?

This part is open ended, but you still need a summary / take home message placed in a "Topic sentence:"

7. As explained before, use Google Scholar to generate your reference (s) in APA format, and paste here. Your references will include the one paper you used for a critical summary, and that might be fine to stop there, but if you refer to any other sources or papers, they should be included here as well. for example if you want to refer to something from Polgar and Primack, that would be included here as well.