Designcraft for experiments: Backyard Bioblitz

A set of remote exercises exploring experimental design for the life sciences. A total of three independent labs were done to focus on different design principles, sampling techniques, and taxa. Exercises are described in full in this open access manual entitled Designcraft for experiments. Data were collected by students in a third-year biology course offering at York University in Toronto, ON, Canada. Students collected the data and published individual datasets to figshare with a CCBY4.0 licensing. Data were then compiled for each lab including balcony birdwatching, backyard bioblitz, and solo surveys. The provenance of each independent observation in the compiled data was recognized by attribution to the initials of the primary data author including citation via DOI and link to figshare.AttributionCJL designed the experiments.Students in course offering collected, innovated, and published individual, primary datasets.SH and CJL reviewed the compiled data.MetadataRecord-levelyear is the calendar year of work not termexperiment describes the three experimental options in designcraft booksource is either full experiment or pilot experimentrep is the replicate per experimental setlocation is the site name locallyhabitat is the ecological classificationdate is the calendar date for each observation