Education Commons^™

Top-Down And Bottom-Up Approaches To Understanding The Fate Of The Federally Endangered Schaus’ Swallowtail Butterfly (Heraclides Aristodemus Ponceanus), Jaeson T. Clayborn

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The federally endangered Schaus’ swallowtail butterfly (Heraclides aristodemus ponceanus) populations have declined precipitously over the years. Despite tremendous efforts to augment the numbers of this butterfly through captive-bred releases and habitat enhancements, it remains imperiled and federally endangered. The dissertation’s objectives were: 1) to restore dry forest habitat in Biscayne National Park (BNP) for Schaus’ swallowtails; 2) to assess host plant (torchwood and wild lime) survivorship and growth in the restoration sites (BNP) and project dry forest habitat loss because of imminent sea level rise (SLR); 3) to quantify ant activity and record predator-prey interactions against Heraclides caterpillars …

Creating A Learning Community In The Sciences, Bart De Stasio, Beth De Stasio, Brian Piasecki

Diversity Conference 2017

Science is a collaborative discipline that is best learned through discussion, experimentation and group activity. But several groups of students—particularly students of color, first generation college students and some international students— are often marginalized in our classrooms, labs and are left out of study groups. Their voices aren’t heard, their points of view and interpretations aren’t always appreciated and the learning of these students is thwarted. To address these issues, we have been involved in forming and designing two groups that have been functioning for the past two years: LEDS (Lawrentians Enhancing Diversity in the Sciences) and BioCore, a supplementary …

Edgar Lehr, March 10, 2017, Charlie Schlenker

Interviews for WGLT

Charlie Schlenker from WGLT interviews IWU Professor of Biology Edgar Lehr. Lehr and his research partner Rudolf von May discovered a new species of frog, formally described as Pristimantis attenboroughi, during an expedition in the Peruvian Andes.

Photographs of Pristimantis attenboroughi can be found at the links below.

A Model Of The Use Of Evolutionary Trees (Muet) To Inform K-14 Biology Education, Yi Kong, Ankita Thawani, Trevor R. Anderson, Nancy Pelaez

PIBERG Publications

Evolutionary trees are powerful tools used in modern biological research, and also commonly used in textbooks and classroom instruction. Studies have shown that K-14 students have difficulties interpreting evolutionary trees. To improve student learning about this topic, it is essential to teach them how to understand and use trees like professional biologists. Unfortunately, few currently used teaching frameworks for evolution instruction are designed for this purpose. In this study we developed the Model of the Use of Evolutionary Trees (MUET), a conceptual model that characterizes how evolutionary trees were used by professional biologists as represented in their research publications. The …