LESSON 5.3
Let the Abstract Work for You
For Grades AP High School - College
Read the Abstract
An abstract is a summary of the article. Read it a couple of times. Make sure you understand it.
You do not have to understand all of it. Just understand what it is basically saying.
Find a possible What Statement
Most abstracts have a What Statement or even a whole hyperthesis clearly stated within them. Such situations greatly reduce the difficulty of writing a paper.
What Statements usually occur in the Abstract. They are often the first sentence, but they can anywhere (or not at all). The What Statements are indicated in boldface.
Example
Response of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) to seasonal changes in rainfall
Abstract: The factors that trigger sudden, seasonal movements of elephants are uncertain. We hypothesized that savannah elephant movements at the end of the dry season may be a response to their detection of distant thunderstorms. Nine elephants carrying Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers were tracked over seven years in the extremely dry and rugged region of northwestern Namibia. The transition date from dry to wet season conditions was determined annually from surface- and satellite-derived rainfall. The distance, location, and timing of rain events relative to the elephants were determined using the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) satellite precipitation observations. Behavioral Change Point Analysis (BCPA) was applied to four of these seven years demonstrating a response in movement of these elephants to intra- and inter-seasonal occurrences of rainfall. Statistically significant changes in movement were found prior to or near the time of onset of the wet season and before the occurrence of wet episodes within the dry season, although the characteristics of the movement changes are not consistent between elephants and years. Elephants in overlapping ranges, but following separate tracks, exhibited statistically valid non-random near-simultaneous changes in movements when rainfall was occurring more than 100 km from their location. While the environmental trigger that causes these excursions remains uncertain, rain-system generated infrasound, which can travel such distances and be detected by elephants, is a possible trigger for such changes in movement.
Variable 1: savannah elephants’ movements
Verb phrase: respond to
Variable 2: seasonal changes in savannah rainfall
Formula: N1 + N2
(Note: figuring out the exact variables could not be done by the title alone. It required the Abstract as well.)
What Statement: Savannah elephant movement at the end of the dry season may be a response to their detection of distant thunderstorms.
- Forest Elephant Crisis in the Congo Basin.
Abstract. Debate over repealing the ivory trade ban dominates conferences of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Resolving this controversy requires accurate estimates of elephant population trends and rates of illegal killing. Most African savannah elephant populations are well known; however, the status of forest elephants, perhaps a distinct species, in the vast Congo Basin is unclear. We assessed population status and incidence of poaching from line-transect and reconnaissance surveys conducted on foot in sites throughout the Congo Basin. Results indicate that the abundance and range of forest elephants are threatened from poaching that is most intense close to roads. The probability of elephant presence increased with distance to roads, whereas that of human signs declined. At all distances from roads, the probability of elephant occurrence was always higher inside, compared to outside, protected areas, whereas that of humans was always lower. Inside protected areas, forest elephant density was correlated with the size of remote forest core, but not with size of protected area. Forest elephants must be prioritized in elephant management planning at the continental scale.
New1 variable: The abundance and range of forest elephants
Verb Phrase: are threatened from
New2 Variable: poaching that is most intense close to roads.
17, On the possible detection of lightning storms by elephants.
What is the What Statement?
Variable 1:
Verb or verb phrase:
Variable 2:
What is the formula?
18. African savannah elephants call one another by ‘name’
Abstract: Using a combination of machine learning and playback experiments in the field, we find that African savannah elephants address members of their family with individually specific, name-like calls. These ‘names’ are probably not imitative of the receiver’s calls, which is similar to human naming but unlike known phenomena in other animals.
What is the What Statement?
Variable 1:
Verb or verb phrase:
Variable 2:
What is the formula?
19. The trunk replaces the longer mandible as the main feeding organ in elephant evolution.
Abstract
The long-trunked elephantids underwent a significant evolutionary stage characterized by an exceptionally elongated mandible. The initial elongation and subsequent regression of the long mandible, along with its co-evolution with the trunk, present an intriguing issue that remains incompletely understood. Through comparative functional and eco-morphological investigations, as well as feeding preference analysis, we reconstructed the feeding behavior of major groups of longirostrine elephantiforms. In the Platybelodon clade, the rapid evolutionary changes observed in the narial region, strongly correlated with mandible and tusk characteristics, suggest a crucial evolutionary transition where feeding function shifted from the mandible to the trunk, allowing proboscideans to expand their niches to more open regions. This functional shift further resulted in elephantids relying solely on their trunks for feeding. Our research provides insights into how unique environmental pressures shape the extreme evolution of organs, particularly in large mammals that developed various peculiar adaptations during the late Cenozoic global cooling trends.
What is the What Statement?
Variable 1:
Verb or verb phrase:
Variable 2:
What is the formula?
20. One elephant may sustain 2 million dung beetles in East African savannas on any given day.
Abstract: In East African savannas, in the rainy season, an elephant dung bolus is usually transformed into a flat mat of dung residue within a few hours. We extracted the coprophilous beetles of a dung mat from a 1 kg bolus after a one-night exposure and counted 13,699 specimens, most of them aphodiine dung beetles. This is the largest number of dung beetles per kilogram of mammal dung ever counted. Given that an elephant produces an average of 160 kg of feces per day, we extrapolate that one adult elephant provides food for 2.12 million dung beetles on any given day. The elephant population in the Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem in central Kenya, an elephant-rich environment, can sustain, by sheer extrapolation, 14.3 billion dung beetles in an area of 55,000 km 2 , which translates to ca. 260,000 dung beetles/km 2 . The decline or extinction of elephants, at least in East African grasslands, may have a massive cascade effect on the populations of coprophagous beetles and the biota dependent on or gaining an advantage from them.
What is the What Statement?
Variable 1:
Verb or verb phrase:
Variable 2:
What is the formula?