Case Study: Involving Endangered Species

Jane Doe walks into a bio-statistics drop-in workshop with questions about her endangered species study. She wants to find the possible severity of various different factors on the population of an endangered species. Unfortunately, her sample size is limited in both the number of places to draw her sample from but yet the number of factors which could be influencing the species of interest population is high. How can she deal with this?

When analyzing the endangered species, it may be difficult to generate data. The first step in collecting information would to first see what information is already publicly available. When data on the species you want has already been collected, then significant amounts of money can be saved during the duration of your study. If you are beginning a totally new study and looking at the endangered species in a way that has not been done before, then actually finding the species will be necessary, but this can be terribly difficult. Many of the endangered species are supposed to be left undisturbed, very difficult to find in the wild, or are already under careful watch of a third party in a man-made habitat. So what happens when you cannot find many of them? Is it time to give up and abandon your study? Not quite!

One possible cure for a small sample of your endangered species is to look into the realm of phylogeny. For those who are not familiar with this term, phylogeny is the study of how lineages of different species have developed over time from a common ancestry. What this means in the context of an endangered species study is that every species presently on Earth has or had in the past, a sister species. The amount of genetic, physical appearance, and behavioral aspects among sister species varies depending on the lineage, but some are only separated by a few different traits. Additionally, many sister species live or lived in similar habitats. Depending on the goal and design of your study and the factors influencing the endangered species and its sister(s), it may be possible to integrate those sister species into your study as well. Ideally, a valid study utilizing this approach would include very little difference between the sister species AND the environment that they exist. If you do not have this, then phylogeny is a dead end for your study.