Postfledging Dependence Period of Migratory Golden Eagles in Denali National Park and Preserve

McIntyre, C. L., and M. W. Collopy. 2006. Postfledging dependence period of migratory golden eagles (Aquila

chrysaetos) in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Auk 123:877-884.

An abstract is a stand alone paragraph that relays all of the critical information of a paper, including the objective, methods, results, and conclusion. By obtaining the abstract the reader can identify what are the main problems to be answered are, and what solutions were found through experimentation. People reading the abstract can then decide whether or not they would want to continue reading the rest of the article. There was no hypothesis for this research, but the purpose of it was to find out the length of the postfledging dependence period of Golden Eagles. The author used information from previous studies beginning in the introduction section. Another section where the author used information from previous studies was in the discussion. By doing this, the author can compare results and decide whether or not his conclusions are scientifically correct. The methods section is written in past tense. This text only differs slightly from a cookbook. One has all of the information needed to exactly repeat this experiment, but it is just not listed in a numerical list. If one needed to repeat the author's test it could easily be done. The location, equipment used, field procedures, and how one should go about collecting the data and estimating the length of the dependence period is all laid out. The results section could easily be followed without the extra help from the tables and graphs. The tables and graphs are there to make it easier to understand the given data and to give more insight into the results of the experiment. The discussion section is where the author interpreted her results. The author's results support previous studies in that both studies have shown that the dependence period for Golden Eagles in western and northern Alaska is less than two months. The author then completes the loop of the scientific method by asking new questions and proposing new experiments to further the research. The author used internal citations throughout the body of the article. All of the citations in the body were given full citations in the Literature Cited section. All of the sources listed were cited within the body of the article.

The question the researchers investigated