In this TIEE experiment, students will explore functional and taxonomic diversity in a stream ecosystem, learn about food web relationships, and learn about the ways in which abiotic and biotic factors determine what organisms are present in a community.
Students will make and install artificial leaf packs in a stream, wait for the leaf packs to be colonized by stream organisms, measure...
In a general sense, biodiversity is an intuitively simple concept, referring to the variety of Earth’s organisms. Ecologists, however, conceptualize biodiversity in a more nuanced, multidimensional way to reflect the enormous diversity of species, niches, and interspecific interactions that generate spatiotemporal complexity in communities. Students may not fully comprehend o...
Human beings are storytellers. This exercise uses the universality of storytelling to engage undergraduate students in ecological science. Students read a fictional narrative that connects scientific principles of ecology to their daily life and in doing so helps students become more personally engaged in the scientific material and more interested in analyzing and evaluating the role of...
In this exercise, students first work in small groups to collect background information on what mosquitofish and bullfrogs consume and then modify a food web based on that knowledge. Students then develop hypotheses of how these two invasive species may affect native amphibian species, snails, and zooplankton. Following, students work individually to analyze experimental mesocosm data to determine...
The Kids Into Discovering Science (KiDS) curriculum, designed for 5th grade students, includes 10 classroom lesson plans and one field trip lesson plan centered on a plant science experiment. Over 10 lessons and a field day, students practice observation, set up and monitor an experiment, analyze and present their data, and learn about plant ecology, soil ecology, habitats, and their local...
Publisher: EcoEd Digital Library PlantEd Digital Library
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