In two 4-6 week modules (case studies) students explore the influences of urban practices on the ecosystem health of the Chesapeake Bay. A field trip to the Anacostia River helps introduce the case study. In a jigsaw design, students first act as expert groups or stakeholders and then are assigned into different mixed groups. During each step of the process, students utilize social and natural...
Grasping the mathematics underlying the species-area relationship in island biogeography can be difficult for students if they experience it passively. This exercise allows students to take an authentic data set of bird species richness from different islands in the Solomon Islands Archipelago and fit a species-area relationship (S=cAz). Students explore a biological concept in a hands-on...
Use maps, online databases, and peer-reviewed literature to:
(1) learn background information on
WNV (history of emergence in the US; life cycle, hosts, and vectors; different forms of WNV
disease and susceptibility of various human age groups) and
(2) generate and test hypotheses
correlating human, avian, and mosquito WNV infection with avian biodiversity,
presence/abundance of different...
Species diversity generally increases in the tropics but testing theories that explain this phenomenon is challenging. Here we use body size to quantify niches in ecological communities and explore how species diversify towards the equator.
At the end of this activity, students will demonstrate their ability to understand basic principles of disease transmission, convey real epidemiological data as visual stories, and develop a plan to handle a “real” outbreak. Instructors may evaluate students’ knowledge and comprehension of the basic principles of disease transmission by analyzing how students’ initial and final hypotheses changed...
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