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How to Write a Grant Proposal

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How to Write a Grant Proposal

The grant proposal is a chance for you to explore in greater depth anything you have discovered or always thought was interesting about animal behavior. The purpose of this assignment is for you to write a research plan for a grant proposal to be submitted to a funding agency with the goal of financially supporting your original research. You are encouraged to be creative and try to come up with a problem that either has not been treated in sufficient depth, which has been ignored, or appears to be involved in some kind of controversy. Be problem-oriented, not organism-oriented.

The specific aims of the assignment are:

  1. to develop a research plan surrounding a clearly defined study question,
  2. to develop specific hypotheses that can be tested to answer aspects of your

study question,

  1. to clearly communicate the methods by which you will conduct experiments that

directly test your hypotheses,

  1. to provide a concise review of relevant literature related to your study question so

that your proposed experiments are placed in a larger context, and

  1. to practice the communication of science in a well-written, clear and concise

If you are unable to pick a suitable organism for testing your ideas, come see me. I will be glad to discuss this assignment with you.

PROCEDURE:

  1. The first step to writing a grant proposal is to find a good question to study. You

should pick out a system, question or concept that you are sincerely interested

  1. The textbooks for the course present numerous animal systems you could

study and may be a good starting point for you.

NOTE a: This step is, without a doubt, the most difficult part of this assignment.

NOTE b: Be problem-oriented, not animal-oriented. Good research in animal behavior provides answers to general questions that apply to many animal species. At least three different styles of presentation can be successful. One particularly effective method is to focus on an area of controversy. Examples of such areas are honest vs deceptive advertisement, good genes vs nonadaptive models of sexual selection, evolution of eusociality through parental manipulation of sibling cooperation, etc. Frequently, controversy exists because conflicting theories have been proposed in the absence of supporting data.

  1. Next, you should search the scientific literature and familiarize yourself with

published studies in your chosen topic. Your research, like everyone’s, will be

based on experiments conducted by other scientists in the past. You should

become somewhat of an expert in your chosen area.

Note a: The library is a very good place to start. Browse through all the latest issues of the behavior journals such as Animal Behavior, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series B, Behaviour, Ethology, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, American Naturalist, Evolution, and Journal of Animal Ecology or review journals such as Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Quarterly Review of Biology, or Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology. Then, if you find an article that sounds interesting, read it, and read some of the references that are cited in it. You should be able to trace an idea back to its origin by just reading a handful of articles and quickly decide if the topic is suitable for a grant proposal.

The library also has a variety of useful databases such as Web of Knowledge.  These databases, and several others, can be also be accessed through the library web site (library.cudenver.edu).

  1. Clearly articulate your study question in writing.
  2. Develop a few hypotheses that can be tested by experimental methods. Keep

this aspect of your proposal simple; a grant is not necessarily made better by a

large number of hypotheses to test. You should have a small number of

hypotheses in mind.

Typically, one of these will be a null hypothesis which often states that the observed pattern is due to chance, rather than as a consequence of past selection. You should present these hypotheses without bias, i.e. do not state that you believe one over the others unless you have direct evidence for making such a conclusion. The purpose of your research should be to test between these hypotheses.

  1. Write the “specific aims” section of the grant using your hypotheses.
  2. Create an outline of the experimental methods you would use to test your

hypothesis. You do not have to re-create the wheel here. You should borrow the

methods that other scientists have used in your study area and simply cite the

papers you borrow from. Also, statistical tests can be borrowed from these

papers as well. A good strategy may be to ask similar research questions, and

use similar research methods, as published work but perform the work on

another animal system.

  1. Write a draft of your methods section. In this section, you need to provide

sufficient detail on your experimental design and research techniques so that a

reviewer who is not necessarily an expert in your field can evaluate the proposed

work. Common techniques can be mentioned and referenced from the scientific

literature.

  1. Write the introduction section after you have read several relevant articles. It is

often easiest to write the introduction section last, after you have had time to mull

over your research ideas and methods. Notice how authors the articles you are

citing phrase the introductions to those papers. You might use their format to

start an outline for your own introduction. Those other papers will help you piece

together the relevant concepts needed to place your proposed work into context.

You will also write a paragraph, or two, detailing how your work will add to the

scientific knowledge in your field; i.e., you will explicitly tell the reviewers why

your work is significant (i.e., justify why hard-earned tax dollars should be used to

fund your research proposal).

  1. Prepare a bibliography of the research articles you cited in the text. Within the

text, cite articles as “(Author, Year)” if one author; “(Author1 and Author2, Year)”

if two authors; and “(First Author, et al., Year) if more than two authors. Only

state the authors’ last names in the text.

  1. Fill out the grant cover sheet. You will be the principal investigator. Do not add

your name to this form, but instead add your student identification number so that

the peer-review process will be anonymous.

  1. Write a summary of your research plan and add it to the cover page. The

summary is simply an abstract of the entire research plan. The first few

sentences should state your research questions and provide a very brief

introductory background to the study. Next, you will state the specific hypotheses

you plan to test. You could then outline the methods you will use to study the

hypotheses. Lastly, it might be helpful to mention why your work is significant.

Organization

RESEARCH PLAN EXPLANATION:

The research plan is the guts of a grant proposal, if you will. In the research plan, you

detail what your research problem is, the specific research aims of your proposed work,

your proposed methods, and the overall significance of your research. Other parts of

the grant, which will not include for this assignment, are mostly administrative cover

sheets, biographic sketches and a budget.

 

The specific areas of the research plan you must include are: 1) specific aims, 2) background on research area, 3) significance of research and 4) methods. You will also be required to fill-in a cover page that includes a concise summary of your grant proposal.

 

  1. Specific Aims

The first part of writing a grant is to define what your overall study question will be. Your grant should propose to study a larger question (for example, how is honeybee foraging affected by gene expression?). You should state this question in the most obvious of fashions. You could make this the very first sentence of the grant. You want to write a proposal from which a reviewer can easily state something like, “This scientist proposed to study [your research question here],” even if they do not closely read the rest of the proposal. In the specific aims section, you concisely list the questions or hypotheses you propose to test. The specific aims you list should all be related to each other and test specific areas of the larger question you wish to answer. This section of the research plan allows reviewers to easily understand the intellectual concepts you wish to study. You must be very specific in this section and not very verbose; background information will be provided in the next section of the research plan.

 

  1. Background and Significance

 

Background

In this section, you will pick and choose relevant information from the literature you have

found on your study question in order to educate reviewers on the relevant theoretical

and experimental information they will need to understand your proposed hypotheses

and methods. The majority of papers you cite will be added to the background section

of the introduction.

 

Significance of Research

In this section, you will write a paragraph or two to answer the following question: Why

should National Science Foundation fund your research? In other words, what

information will your proposed work add to your field of study?

 

  1. Research Design and Methods

You should organize this section according to the specific aims you outlined. General

techniques that are applicable to all of the specific aims can be presented first and then

the specific techniques and design used for the specific aims can be presented in order

after that. You must provide enough detail so that a reviewer who is not so familiar with

you field of study can understand what you plan to do. Pay close attention to

experimental design, including clearly presenting controls used in the experiment.

Again, do not reinvent the wheel here; borrow relevant methods from published papers

in the literature. The library also has books that outline research methods in ecology

and behavior.

 

  1. Bibliography

You will need to use no fewer than 5 primary literature sources (peer-reviewed science papers). You may use sources from the secondary literature (web, newpapers, popular science) if necessary but they will not count toward your citation count.

 

Use the following formats for your bibliography:

 

  1. For books:

Bailey, N. J.1981. Statistical Methods in Biology. 2nd edn. London: Unibooks.

 

  1. For book chapters:

Emlen, S. T. 1978. The evolution of cooperative behaviour in birds. In:

Behavioural Ecology (Ed. by J. R. Krebs & N. B. Davies), pp. 245-281.

Oxford: Blackwell Scientific.

 

  1. For research articles:

Robinson, M. H. & Robinson, B. 1970. The stabilimentum of the orb web

spider, Argiope argentata: an improbable defense against predators.

Canadian Entomologist, 102, 641-645.

 

 

POINTS BREAKDOWN:

Turn-in research ideas: 10 points

Turn-in draft of specific aims: 10 points

Turn-in draft of methods: 20 points

Turn-in draft of introduction: 20 points

Turn in complete draft: 20 points

Turn-in two completed reviews of peer grants: 20 points

Final draft of completed grant proposal: 100 points

TOTAL: 200 POINTS

 

Spatial Response of Puma concolor to Major Highway System Intersecting Rocky Mountain Region of Colorado

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BIOL 4250

Grant Proposal – Sample

Title: Spatial Response of Puma concolor to Major Highway System Intersecting Rocky Mountain Region of Colorado

 Specific Aims

 It has been observed over years of wildlife research that major road and highway systems can affect wildlife negatively. Traffic and consistent human presence can cause wildlife to avoid the surrounding areas where highways are located. This can lead to negative responses from wildlife, including isolating populations and preventing genetic drift. One species that is affected in the Rocky Mountain region is the mountain lion Puma concolor. The principal question that will be investigated in this study is how Puma concolor is affected by roads and highways cutting through the Rocky Mountain region. The primary methods that will be used to evaluate how P. concolor reacts to these areas are via radio telemetry collar data and motion-activated camera data. The primary hypothesis that will be tested is that roads and highways are negatively influencing P. concolor movement patterns across the highway and, by extension, genetic diversity and drift via spatial data collected from cameras. A secondary hypothesis that will be investigated is that individual P. concolor territories are relatively smaller than recorded territories and do not extend across the highway. Through investigating these hypothesis, more information will be gathered about how P.concolor is reacting to roads and highways. This data can be used to further work in conservation of the Rocky Mountain Region and the management of anthropogenic effects on local wildlife.

  1. Introduction and Background

Wildlife fragmentation and Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions (WVCs) are systemic and pressing issues in the realm of wildlife-human conflict in the United States and beyond. One of the ways that wildlife management organizations and researchers have proposed to help mitigate WVCs is through wildlife underpasses and overpasses. These structures are bridges built over roads and highways as well as tunnels built underneath to give wildlife populations currently fragmented by roads a way to cross them without interacting with traffic. This in turn helps to reduce risk to both the wildlife and humans involved.

These overpasses and underpasses have already been built in different parts of the world, including the United States, with varying levels of success. In Banff National Park it was found that the wildlife underpasses built within the national park had higher levels of success for ungulates when human activity was present than carnivores (Clevenger 2001). It has also been noted that due to a lack of research into the effectiveness of these wildlife passes after they’ve been constructed it is difficult to evaluate the long-term success of these structures in terms of genetic diversity and reduction of fragmentation costs to wildlife (Corlatti 2009). Given this information, there is substantial incentive to begin evaluating the effectiveness of these structures before significant government and private resources are allocated to further construction.

It has been shown that carnivores have negative responses to roads and highways. Wolverines (Gulo gulo luscus) have been shown to have negative movement and habitat-selection responses to roads. Additionally, it is posited that roads and highways elicit responses from wildlife similar to natural responses to predation risk (Scrafford 2018). Historically, it has also been concluded that black bears (Ursus americanus) in the Southeastern United States have an increased negative association with roads as the human traffic increases (Brody 1989).

Mountain lions (Puma concolor) are carnivores that have the largest north-south distribution of any recorded terrestrial mammal in the Western hemisphere (Hunter 2015), and live in a varying distribution of habitat types. Male mountain lions are also known to travel long distances and help maintain diversity of the species across the wide range they persist in (Elbroch 2009). Thus, knowing how mountain lions are affected by fragmentation and roads is significant when considering the conservation of this species as well as other species affected by the carnivore (i.e. ungulate prey species). It has been found that 28% of mountain lion deaths in Southern California were due to vehicle collisions and that the highway intersecting the study site resulted in significant genetic restriction and demographic isolation (Vickers 2015). Additionally, it has been found that mountain lion population densities and genetic flow are heavily influenced by habitat quality and nearby human activity (Dickson 2013). Case studies have even shown that highways can serve as a complete genetic barrier for P. concolor and that one male successfully crossing the barrier can dramatically impact the genetic diversity of a small, isolated population. This highlights the importance of giving mountain lions a safe and successful way of crossing roads and highways (Riley 2014). When looking at how P. concolor is affected by overpasses and underpasses, it has been found that they will utilize these structures, though primarily during seasons with less human traffic (Gloyne 2001).

There has already been a wildlife pass system established in north-central Colorado, comprised of 5 underpasses and 2 overpasses (Colorado Highway 9), which has resulted in successful movements across the road for a variety of wildlife, including mountain lions (Kintsch 2019, Kintsch 2020). Given this success, a wildlife pass system has been suggested and heavily promoted over the Vail Pass portion of the I-70 corridor (I-70 East Vail Pass). Camera trap data has been collected from this area to develop an understanding of how wildlife in the area interact with this section of I-70 (Colorado Corridors Project).

When looking at the previous knowledge of Puma concolor and their interactions with highways, as well as the emerging interest in building an overpass and underpass system in the Vail Pass area, conducting research on this population and how they are spatially responding to the I-70 highway cutting through the region is an important aspect of both local wildlife management and potential funding and resource allocation for this area. There are two hypotheses that will be tested in this research. Hypothesis I aims to evaluate how mountain lions are interacting with the highway and crossing it. Using radio telemetry collar data and motion-activated camera data, individual mountain lions will be evaluated over 4-5 years to see how, or if, they are crossing the highway, and how often. Motion-activated cameras will help evaluate if mountain lions from outside the population are entering the area across the I-70 highway, as well as record evidence of behavioral trends with the mountain lions that are crossing (for example, if most of the individuals that are crossing are following prey). This will help to gather a better understanding of if the I-70 highway is acting as a barrier to the mountain lions, cutting them off from the other side and serving as a potential genetic barrier.

Additionally, Hypothesis II aims to evaluate how territory size has been affected by the I-70 highway intersecting the region. Using the radio telemetry data from the collared mountain lions, ranges will be approximated for each of the individuals. Then, statistical analyses will be used to evaluate whether these ranges (considering the difference in range size between males and females of P. concolor generally) are a significantly different size when compared to previously recorded ranges for mountain lions (in areas with more human activity and mountain lions in areas with less human activity than the ones in this study). It will also be evaluated whether (and if so how much) of these ranges in the study area overlap with the highway, so that it can be evaluated further whether the highway may be acting as a barrier to the populations on either side of the highway.

III. Research Methods

Model Organism

The organism that will be studied in this research is Puma concolor, also known as mountains lions or pumas. P. concolor is a large felid that has the largest north-south distribution of any territorial mammal in the western hemisphere, ranging from upper North America to lower South America and covering a wide range of habitats. Mountain lions are ambush predators which primarily eat medium to large-sized mammals. Territory size varies between the sexes, with males having much larger territories that overlap multiple female territories. Overall population density rarely exceeds 1-3 pumas per 100km2 (Hunter 2019). They primarily hunt at dusk, night, and early morning, and are primarily solitary and territorial, though non-mating interactions between pumas have been recorded. P. concolor is known to generally avoid humans and areas with high anthropogenic activity.

Study Site

This study will be conducted in Colorado, United States, along the I-70 highway corridor. Building off of previous research in the area, the study site will be the Vail Pass area (approximately mile points 190-197). This area is at approximately 10,666 feet of elevation and is primarily subalpine and alpine. The estimated population is P. concolor in Colorado ranges from 3,000 – 7,000 (What We Know About Mountain Lions).

Figure 1: Approximate location of study site along the I-70 highway (screen capture using Google Maps)

Hypothesis I: Road Crossing

To evaluate how individual mountain lions are interacting with I-70 there will be a mixture of motion-activated cameras and tracking collars implemented to generate data. This way, both the spatial data for individuals can be tracked as well as observations of mountain lions, including those not collared, crossing the highway.

1-5 individuals will be found via trailing hounds, tranquilized, and have radio telemetry collars placed on them as well as ear tags (ear tags will help to identify individuals on the motion-activated cameras). Other data will also be collected while the mountain lions are tranquilized including weight, sex, and measurements. Over the 4-5-year period of the study, the movement data of the collared individuals will be gathered so that an evaluation can be done of how local P. concolor are moving in relation to the activity and presence of the I-70 highway. Similar to previous research evaluating how Gulo gulo luscus reacts spatially to highways, an integrated step-selection analysis (Scrafford 2018) will be used to estimate parameters to describe the relative probability of space use by P. concolor in relation to the highway traffic. Estimates of traffic intensity will be collected from the Colorado Department of Transportation. This will be used to evaluate whether P. concolor reacts negatively to the highway and evaluate how I-70 may be affecting movement patterns, specifically if the highway is a barrier to movement of individuals. This may have implications of drift and may be reducing the genetic variation within the population, causing inbreeding and deleterious mutations.

To evaluate both the individuals that are collared and individuals that are not collared, 15 camera-traps will be placed along the I-70 corridor on Vail Pass, evenly spaced and placed alternately on either side of along both sides of the designated stretch of I-70. These cameras will be maintained and routinely checked for integrity. Over the 4-5 years of the study, instances of individual mountain lions moving across I-70 will be kept and evaluated. Individuals already caught for the study will be identifiable by their ear-tag while records will be kept of non-marked individuals. Additional data such as other wildlife within the proximity of the images captured and which side of the road the individuals were crossing from will be used to help determine the behaviors of mountain lions towards the highway (for example, if there is a high proportion of crossings due to tracking prey). This will further the understanding of whether the highway is serving as a genetic barrier, or if mountain lions are crossing back and forth across it, specifically ones not previously recorded in the area that may be coming in to add to the population and genetic pool.

Figure 2. Example of Puma concolor female with 3 cubs captured with

motion activated cameras (Kintsch 2019).

Hypothesis II: Territory Size

In addition to determining general movement patterns for the mountain lions that have radio telemetry collars placed on them, the tracking data will be used to determine the approximate territory sizes of the individuals. With this data, two separate ANOVA tests will be used. One test will evaluate the mean size of male territories in the study and compare that average to the mean male territory size in regions with higher human interference and to the mean size of male territories in regions with less human interference (comparative mean sizes will be derived from other radio telemetry data of P. concolor collected in other studies). A second ANOVA test will evaluate the mean female territory size of the individuals in the Vail Pass area and compare that to the mean female territory size in regions with higher human interference and mean female territory size in regions of less human interference than the Vail Pass area. This will not only assess whether the mean territory size of the mountain lions in the Vail Pass study site are significantly larger or smaller when compared with other groups, but it will also evaluate whether male or female territories are affected differently. Another aspect of the territories that will be analyzed is the approximate amount of territory for an individual that overlaps the highway, to evaluate if the highway is functioning as a territorial barrier to P. concolor.

  1. Significance of Research

This research aims to develop a better understanding of how carnivores are impacted by roads and highways, and how these detrimental effects may be mitigated by wildlife passes. It also aims to evaluate how P. concolor, a significant carnivore in most of North America, interacts with roads and highways and how this may affect the population’s health and genetic integrity. Given the significant impact habitat quality and habitat fragmentation caused by roads on the overall success of mountain lions, developing a model for mountain lion-road interactions and using this to evaluate the potential success of proposed overpasses or underpass should be an important aspect of successful wildlife management and conservation in North America. Additionally, conducting research to establish how the I-70 highway may be serving as a genetic barrier to this population will be crucial in the continued conservation of mountain lions in this region as well as in other regions with similar situations. Ultimately, conducting this research would contribute to maintaining and managing healthy P. concolor populations in the Rocky Mountain region as well as other wildlife species impacted by mountain lions.

Bibliography

  1. Anthony P. Clevenger and Nigel Waltho. 2001. Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Wildlife Underpasses in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. Conservation Biology, 14(1), 47-56.
  2. Luca Corlatti, Klaus Hacklander, and Fredy Frey-Roos. 2009. Ability of Wildlife Overpasses to Provide Connectivity and Prevent Genetic Isolation. Conservation Biology, 23(3), 548-556.
  3. Matthew A. Scrafford, Tal Avgar, Rick Heeres, and Mark S. Boyce. 2018. Roads elicit negative movement and habitat-selection responses by wolverines (Gulo gulo luscus). Behavioral Ecology, 29(3), 534-542.
  4. Allan J. Brody and Michael R. Pelton. 1989. Effects of Roads on Black Bear Movements in Western North Carolina. Wildlife Society Bulletin, 17(1), 5-10.
  5. Luke Hunter. 2015. Puma (Puma concolor). In: Wild Cats of the World, 157-166. Bloomsbury: Bloomsbury Natural History.
  6. Mark Elbroch, Heiko U. Wittmer, Cristian Saucedo and Paulo Corti. 2009. Long-distance Dispersal of a Male Puma (Puma concolor puma) in Pategonia. Revista Chilena de Historia Natural, 82(3), 459-461.
  7. T. Winston Vickers, Jessica N. Sanchez, Christine K. Johnson, Scott A. Morrison et al. 2015. Survival and Mortality of Pumas (Puma concolor) in a Fragmented, Urbanizing Landscape. PLoS ONE, 10(7), e0131490.
  8. Brett G. Dickson, Gary W. Roemer, Brad H. McRae, and Jill M. Rundall. 2013. Models of Regional Habitat Quality and Connectivity for Pumas (Puma concolor) in the Southwestern United States. PLoS ONE, 8(12), e81898.
  9. Seth P.D. Riley, Laurel E. K. Serieys, John P. Pollinger, Jeffrey A. Sikich et al. 2014. Individual Behaviors Dominate the Dynamics of an Urban Mountain Lion Population Isolated by Roads. Current Biology, 24(17), 1989-1994.
  10. Claire C. Gloyne, Anthony P. Clevenger. 2001. Cougar (Puma concolor) use of Wildlife Crossing Structures on the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park, Alberta. Wildlife Biology, 7(3), 117-124.
  11. The Colorado Highway 9 Wildlife Crossing Project. Colorado Parks and Wildlife, https://cpw.state.co.us/hwy9#:~:text=%E2%80%8BA%20Safe%20Passage&text=In%202016%2C%20the%20Colorado%20Department,Green%20Mountain%20Reservoir%20and%20Kremmling.
  12. Julia Kintsch, Patricia Cramer, Paige Singer, Michelle Cowardin et al. 2019. State Highway 9 Wildlife Crossings Monitoring – Year 3 Progress Report. Colorado Department of Transportation, study number 115.01.
  13. Julia Kintsch, Patricia Cramer, Paige Singer, Michelle Cowardin et al. 2020. State Highway 9 Wildlife Crossings Monitoring – Year 4 Progress Report. Colorado Department of Transportation, study number 115.01.
  14. I-70 East Vail Pass Wildlife Crossings. Summit County Safe Passages, https://www.summitcountysafepassages.org/initiatives/vail-pass/.
  15. Colorado Corridors Project. Zooniverse, https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/coloradocorridorsproject/colorado-corridors-project/talk.
  16. What We Know About Mountain Lions. Colorado Parks and Wildlife,

https://cpw.state.co.us/learn/Pages/LivingwithWildlifeLion2.aspx.