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BIOL 354 - Principles of Ecology (Taniguchi)

This guide will help you find the resources you need for your BIOL 354: Ecology Lab Research Paper

Peer-Reviewed Sources

How can you tell if an article is "peer-reviewed", or "scholarly"?

Watch the video below to learn how to figure out whether the source you found is a "peer-reviewed" article.

Identify a Peer-Reviewed Article by USC Libraries

The databases below will have the best information for ecology-related topics:

Database Disciplinary Coverage
Biological Abstracts Life sciences, ranging from botany to microbio to pharmacology
BioOne Biological, ecological, and environmental sciences
JSTOR Multi-disciplinary literature
Google Scholar @ CSUSM Multi-disciplinary literature
ScienceDirect Multi-disciplinary literature, mainly in the sciences and medical fields, limited to Elsevier published research (Note: make sure you don't *only* search ScienceDirect, since you will only find research published by a single publishing company)

 

Tips Examples
Use keywords, not long search phrases

Instead of searching for "How does intraspecific competition affect the growth rates of plants?" break down your search into the main keywords:

intraspecific competition, growth rate, plants

To get more focused results:

Use quotation marks (" ") to keep phrases together

Use AND to combine different keywords

Try adding species names to find species-specific information

 "intraspecific competition" AND "growth rate" AND plants AND Brassica

To get broader results:

Use OR to combine similar/associated keywords

Truncate words that have a variety of endings with a *

("intraspecific competition" OR "exploitative competition") AND "growth rate" AND plant*

 

plant* includes plant and also plants
Look for ways to limit your search in the database

You can often limit by type of article (scholarly and peer-reviewed) & year of publication