Does anyone here have experience with simple ethograms for observational studies? I'm not much in the way up on fish behavior or design and analysis of behavioral studies. While I was doing a microhabitat use study I noticed a few odd possibly unique behaviors and started taking down categorical observations, (resting, swimming, feeding, etc.) and things liek whether or not these behaviors took place in the presence of other individuals, other species, and their abundances. I've just kind of sat on the data for year and a half now and want to look into it. I'll be getting to an initial lit search this weekend and perusing some texts.

Was just forwarded this paper at work this morning by a colleauge,and it made me think of this thread. It may be of some limited help to you, though like most of the research that comes out of zoo's, it is sickeningly slanted towards mammals:

Margulis, S.W., Westhus, E.J. 2008. Evaluation of different observational sampling regimes for use in zoological parks. Applied Animal Behaviour Science.

For what it's worth,
-Barrett