2022. Brehm and Mortelliti. Small mammal personalities generate context dependence in the seed dispersal mutualism

  In addition to summarizing a paper, it is also useful to be able to develop your own ideas about a paper.
When writing a critique, you are discussing your opinion or judgment about the paper. Think of your
critique like an argumentative essay. You will develop your overall opinion of the paper and then explain
why you have that opinion, backing it up with evidence (from the paper and two other sources). Use the
questions we discussed in the Publishing & Paraphrasing” lecture help you think about what to look for in
each section of the paper. Think back to your Perusall annotations and Paper Summaries to consider the
following questions:
1) What is/are the specific question(s) being addressed?
2) What is the general underlying theory (the “big picture”) driving the paper’s objective(s)?
3) Are hypotheses & predictions given? If so, do you agree with them?
4) Can you identify any problems with the methods used to collect the data? If yes, what are they
and how would you correct them?
5) Were there any gaps in knowledge or assumptions made in this paper?
6) Are there any problems with how they report the results? Statistics? Figures? Tables?
7) Do the authors successfully answer their research questions/objectives? Provide evidence.
8) Did you agree or disagree with the conclusions?
9) If you were to continue the research from this paper, where would you go next? (i.e., how would
you follow up on this research?)
10) What other disciplines could be impacted by this work?
11) What were its strongest and weakest points?
12) Do you have any other thoughts on this paper you would like to share?