The rise of biodiversity-related citizen science projects gives us the opportunity to inspire all students to become citizen scientists, no matter what their professional path. Here, I share an in-class exercise that introduces undergraduates to biodiversity and citizen science using the open-source platform iNaturalist. I developed the exercise as part of a semester-long module on bumblebee...
This module presents a science-based story to demonstrate how climate determines the global, long-term, large-scale distribution of living organisms; whereas, weather determines the local, short-term, small-scale ecology of living organisms. Life thrives within specific, often narrow ranges of temperature and precipitation – two main players in climate and weather. Using a systems-based approach,...