Lab Week 2

Popular Media Science Reporting and Science Research Articles:

Exploring the Relationship

1- What wording used in a popular science article would lead you to believe it is based on a peer- reviewed article?
a- Published By: American Society of mammalogists. (Source: Journal of Mammalogy, 94(6):1331-1345. 2013 )

b- Mario A. Cozzuol, Professor, UFMG- Universidade de Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

c- Bioone Online Research ( View its website).


2-   Evaluation of the experimental design used by Maria A. Cozzuol, Camalia L. Clozato and Elizete C. Holanda to carry out the result of this scientific research.

This discovery was based on a controlled experiment because the scientists heard from indigenous people that there is the presence of new species Tapir in Amazon forest.

Based on this visual observation, they used DNA, skulls samples from museum and other tools to verify this observation. This observation pushed them to elaborate a hypothesis. The.The hypothesis of this research was to compare the morphological and molecular specimens of the species of tapir from western Brazilian Amazon with all other Tapirus species. The data supported the hypothesis because they found a new species called Tapirus Kabomani which has completely different molecular and morphological structure than the others species of tapir.

 The methods used throughout this research are repeatable which means anyone can reproduce the same result.From my point of view, this research wasn’t replicated because it showed the sources of data and it was sponsored by many prestigious environmental organization and universities all over the world such as Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley, California and Universidad Javeriana Bogota, Colombia.

 The Tapirus Kabomani can live only on forested area for this reason the deforestation, increasing human population, and the construction of 2 large hydroelectric complexes along the upper Madeira River and the reactivation of the Porto Velho-Manaus highway, BR 319, which facilitate land occupation in the area where the known specimens collected. The managers and the beneficiaries of these projects may be in conflict with environmental organizations that protect this endangered species.

 The popular article has almost the same title than the peer- reviewed article. The popular articles (The Environment News Service) did a great in terms of detail, precision and it follows the writing format of a popular article. It introduced the tapir mainly as endangered species, and gave more details about the processes used by the scientists to carry out this study. It mentioned the effects of deforestation for this species.

Literature Cited

  Peer- reviewed article

 Mario A. Cozzuol. 2013. A new species of Tapir from Amazon [Internet]. UFMG- Universidade de Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte, Brazil; [Cited January 25, 2014]. Available from :http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.1644/12-MAMM-A-169.1

Popular Article

Minas Gerais. 2013. New Tapir species discovered in the Amazon. [Internet]. Environment News Service; [cited January 25, 2014]. Available from: http://ens-newswire.com/2013/12/24/new-tapir-species-discovered-in-the-amazon/