This guided inquiry module provides an approach to teaching major groups of terrestrial plants and the methods used to construct and analyze phylogenies.
During a single lab period, students simulate colonization and drift in artificial communities to understand how these processes affect distributions of biodiversity in small versus large communities with varying degrees of isolation. Plastic bins represent islands, and are situated to represent different degrees of isolation. Ziploc bags of candy represent individuals in the communities and...
This is a multi-week laboratory exercise that involves sequencing a pair of mitochondrial genes in cows. Using data from several samples, students calculate diversity (variation within species) and divergence (variation between species). The exercise reinforces principles in molecular genetics (DNA purification, PCR, etc.) and introduces principles in molecular population genetics. We provide...
Phylogenetic or evolutionary trees are diagrams that are used extensively in their traditional realms of systematics and taxonomy, but have also become more common throughout biology in research ranging from conservation to epidemiology. Phylogenetic trees contain a wealth of information about the patterns of evolutionary diversification and relationships within and among different kinds...
Cooperative learning: Students can work through the exercises in groups, using either the painted turtle data
or group-specific taxa (i.e., each group selects a taxon to model). This module addresses multiple, complex
concepts online data availability & access, spatial query & analysis, global climate models, theoretical
concepts of SDMs, model fitting any of which can be expanded depending...