BIOL 450: Advanced Topics in Plant Biology (HC) Fall 2023

Here's the true story of how I approached doing review paper on a topic in plant biology:

1. I looked at your syllabus for ideas > I settled on the broad topic of flower scent in relation to pollination.
    
2. I  googled 'flower scent pollination' and came across this short article.
    
3. From that article, I learned additional vocabulary and narrowed down my topic to:

'How do circadian rhythms in floral scent emission affect pollination'?

1. I set out to find a primary research article on that topic.

Example

How do circadian rhythms in floral scent emission affect pollination?

Step 1: Break up this research question into its main concepts. Ignore extraneous words.

• Concept #1: circadian
• Concept #2: scent
• Concept #3: pollination

Step 3: Using information from your initial search, add synonyms, acronyms, and variant spellings.

• Concept #1: circadian, temporal
• Concept #2: scent, volatiles
• Concept #3: pollination

• Even if the search engine you are using doesn't require you to enter boolean operators, it is still using them behind the scenes. It will help you to know the logic behind your search
  .
• AND gives you results that include ALL of your concepts.
   
• OR gives you results that include ANY of your concepts.
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• Essentially, you are searching:​

(circadian OR temporal) AND (scent OR volatiles) AND (pollination)