Teaching Ecology Post 4: Community Ecology

NOW it is getting interesting!!

In my trek through the world of ecology with my biology 1 students, I suffer a bit through the first few units.  If you have read my previous posts of the last few days, you know that ecology is not my favorite topic to teach.  I have to dig deep within myself to find the enthusiasm to teach about ecology.....at the beginning, that is.  Once I get to the unit on Community Ecology, things definitely get much more interesting!!

A community is ALL of the living organisms found in a particular area. These organisms interact with one another and have powerful influences upon the other species as well as the entire ecosystem.  Consider the introduction of beaver into an area that is normally a "flowing-water" ecosystem.  Beaver would have a huge impact on this community. Recently I received feedback from a teacher that said my PowerPoints were very "visual" and that this had been a big help in teaching his students.   Here's a peak at a few of the slides in my "Community Ecology" unit.

Topics covered in this lesson are:
1. Community Interactions: Definition of community, types of community interactions such as competition, predation, symbiosis, mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism.
2. Competition: Definition of competition, resource, competitive exclusion principle, character displacement, many examples, resource partitioning, the result of organisms having identical niches.
3. Predation: Definition, examples, predator, prey, the role of natural selection, adaptations found in predators, adaptations found in prey, mimicry, adaptations found in plants and herbivores.
4. Symbiosis: Definition of symbiosis, types of symbiosis, mutualism, commensalism, parasitism, examples of each.
5. Properties of Communities: Species richness and diversity, definition of species richness, definition of species diversity, the species-area effect, the result of habitat destruction.
6. Succession: Disturbances, definition and examples of disturbances, types of succession, primary succession, examples of primary succession, secondary succession, examples of secondary succession, pioneer species, climax communities.
7. Succession in a Marine Ecosystem: A Whale-Fall Community.


Now this is subject matter that will be of interest to a biology student!  Start showing pictures of parasitic worms, blood sucking insects, and predator-prey relationships, and students will wake up and take an interest.  


I hope this gives you a few ideas.  But most importantly.....

.....HAVE FUN TEACHING!

Community Ecology PowerPoint with Notes for Teacher and Student

Teaching Ecology Post 3: Population Ecology

A population is a group of organisms, all of the same species, living in the same general area.  Population ecology is a sub-field of ecology that deals with the dynamics of how a species interacts within its population and how the species interacts with the environment.

My personal opinion is that this is not the most exciting topic to teach in a high school biology class.  No offense to any of you population biologists out there, but this can be a little dry and boring.   My plan of attack is to move swiftly, lay out the important points accurately and efficiently, throw in some cool pictures and graphics, and then move on out of this unit!!

Pertinent points to cover include:
1. Characteristics of Populations: Definition of population, geographic distribution, density, dispersion, growth rate, and age structure.
2. Types of Dispersion: Clumped, even, and random.
3. Population Dynamics: Birth rate, death rate, life expectancy.
4. Patterns of mortality: Survivorship Curves, the three types of survivorship curves with examples.
5. Life Histories: Big-bang reproduction and repeated reproduction
6. Population Growth: Growth rate, factors that determine the size of a population, migration, density, exponential growth, carrying capacity, limits to population growth, graphs of different types of population growth, logistic growth, assumptions of the exponential model and the logistic model.
7. Limits to Growth: Limiting factors, examples of limiting factors, density-dependent factors, competition, predation, parasitism, disease, territoriality, density independent factors.
8. Human Population Growth: The history of human population growth, current human population growth, demographic transition, age-structure diagrams.


Put all of this into a PowerPoint and you come up with:

Population Genetics PowerPoint with Notes for Teacher and Student

Teaching Ecology Post 2: Introduction to Ecology

For as much as I love biology and for as many years as I have taught biology, I continue to find the topic of "Ecology" a difficult one to teach.  I have never really been able to put my finger on exactly why this is the case.  The only thing I can come up with is:

• I am a cell physiologist at heart.  I just love, love, love teaching photosynthesis, respiration, protein synthesis, and the like.  
• My students never really show any excitement while learning about ecology.  The very students that are energetic and ask a lot of questions at other times of the year, become strangely silent during the unit on ecology.
• Put the above two reasons together, and what does my self analysis tell me?  Perhaps, my lack of enthusiasm for ecology has a direct impact on my students!!  

I am never a satisfied teacher.  Each year, I am determined to improve my "weakest link."  So this past school year, I was more determined than ever to "like" ecology and get my students excited about it. I started by breaking down the material into 6 mini-units of study:

• Introduction to Ecology
• Population Ecology
• Community Ecology
• Ecosystems and the Biosphere Part 1:  Energy Flow Through the Ecosystem
• Ecosystems and the Biosphere Part 1:  Biomes of the World
• Human Impact on the Biosphere

Since my students always respond well to PowerPoint lectures, I wrote a PowerPoint for each mini-unit above, making sure that I included as many pictures and cool graphics as possible.  I literally WOWED them with clipart, graphics and photographs.

The first PowerPoint is called Introduction to Ecology, and here is a sneak peak.

This PowerPoint covers the following information:

1. What is ecology?
2. The Role of Climate: What is the difference between weather and climate? What factors affect climate?
3. The State of Today's Environment: The exploding human population, the sixth mass extinction, the damage to the ozone layer, and climate changes.
4. The greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases, human activities that contribute to the greenhouse effect.
5. The Effect of Latitude on Climate: Polar zones, temperate zones, and tropical zones.
6. Heat Transfer in the Biosphere: Winds, currents.
7. Levels of Ecological Organization: Biosphere, ecosystems, communities, populations, and organisms.
8. The living and the nonliving components of an ecosystem.
9. The theme of interconnectedness and interdependence in ecology.
10. Biotic and abiotic factors
11. Habitat -vs- Niche.

I was very pleased with how this was received by my students. This PowerPoint is a great start in laying the foundation of all the ecological concepts to come.  If you are interested, I have made this PowerPoint available in my store on TeachersPayTeachers.com.  It consists of 41 slides and comes with notes for both the teacher and student.  The student notes are in outline form.  The students fills in their outline as the lessons are being taught.

Introduction to Ecology PowerPoint and Notes

Teaching Ecology

Since I have been teaching biology for 28 years, I have been through many textbook adoptions during my career.  "Back in the day" the ecology chapters would always be the last chapters and the last unit in the textbook.  Like many other biology teachers, I rarely had time to teach that material.  Those of us who teach biology already know that there is WAAAAAAYYY more material that needs to be taught than there is time to teach it.  Since my favorite teaching topics are cell physiology, genetics and plants, I had no trouble spending too much time on these topics.  All of a sudden it is the end of the year, and I had to leave something out....... it was always ecology!

Poor ecology!!  It is not that I don't like you....  I just don't have time to get to you!

Fast forward to 28 years later.  NOW, the ecology unit is in the front of the textbook for most Biology I books.  AND, now we have an "End of Course" test for Biology I in my state.  AND, ecology standards are covered on the EOC.  Guess what?  I had to start making sure that I covered ecology!

Ecology is a rather daunting topic.  There are so many concepts that have to be covered.  I needed a plan of attack.  After reviewing the material, I decided to break it down into 6 mini-units of study:

• Introduction to Ecology
• Population Ecology
• Community Ecology
• Ecosystems and the Biosphere Part 1:  Energy Flow Through the Ecosystem
• Ecosystems and the Biosphere Part 1:  Biomes of the World
• Human Impact on the Biosphere

To me, some of this material is rather dry.  Parts of it really excite my students, while other parts are a strong sedative to a class of high schoolers!  I knew I would need something visually stimulating and eye-catching to keep their attention.  Since my students always respond well to PowerPoint lectures, I wrote a PowerPoint for each mini-unit above, making sure that I included as many pictures and cool graphics as possible.

Stay tuned.......   My summer blogging plan is to cover one mini-unit a day.  Up tomorrow, ..... Introduction to Ecology!

Beware the Blue-Ringed Octopus!

This octopus is one of the most venomous creatures on Earth!

One of my favorite things about being out of school for the summer is that when something catches my interest, I actually have time to stop, do a little research, and learn something new. Not only does it satisfy my wild craving for all things biological, but it adds to the plethora of factoids and interesting tidbits that I can use to stimulate my students next school year. Nothing is more exciting to me than getting a kid excited about science!!

In the early morning silence of my house (another summertime favorite!) and with coffee in hand, I headed to my deck with my laptop to peruse the science news sites that I love.  I ran across a small blurb about this octopus that really caught my attention.  My best friend, Google, and I quickly came up with this list of facts about the blue-ringed octopus:

• The blue-ringed octopuses are recognized as one of the world's most venomous marine creatures.
• They are small in size, ranging from 5 to 8 inches.
• Their venom is powerful enough to kill a human.  There is no blue-ringed octopus antivenom available.
• They are found in tide pools and coral reefs in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, from Japan to Australia.
• They are recognized by their characteristic blue and black rings and yellowish skin.
• When the octopus is agitated, the skin darkens and the rings may appear to pulsate.  

• The octopus hides in crevices and can squeeze into spaces much smaller than itself.  It uses the pigment cells called chromatophores to camouflage itself.
• The venom contains a neurotoxin that blocks sodium channels, causing motor paralysis and respiratory arrest within minutes of being bitten.
• This toxin is produced by bacteria that live in the salivary glands of the octopus.

• Treatment involves artificial respiration once the victim's respiratory muscles have become paralyzed.  The paralysis is temporary and will pass over several hours as the toxin is metabolized and excreted from the body, but it is essential that rescue breathing continues until the victim is able to breathe on their own.
• The octopus is very shy and docile.  It prefers to stay hidden and comes out to hunt small crabs and shrimps.
• There are three confirmed species, and a fourth is still being considered.

• The female blue-ringed octopus will lay only one clutch of about 50 eggs during her lifetime.  The eggs are incubated under her arms for about 6 months, during which time she will not eat.  When the eggs hatch, the female dies.

Want to know more?  Here is a really good YouTube video.  The footage is very good and it is just 3 minutes in length....perfect for a grabber at the beginning of your biology class.

Happy Teaching!

The Amazing Ant

The ant is truly amazing.  

Like many of you, I also get irritated by them.  But have you ever taken a few minutes to just watch ants?  

This past week end our family joined several other families for a Memorial Day picnic.  We live in the deep South, so it was no surprise to anyone when the ants found our picnic so quickly.  Like other normal people (a biology teacher is rarely normal, but this time I was!) I tried to flick them away from our food and off the picnic table we were using.  

I happened to look down at the ground around the picnic table and spotted the ant hill.  One of us had already stepped in the middle of it, and the ants were in a frenzy.  What caught my eye was the site of the ants lifting the eggs and/or pupae and carrying them to safety.  It was a pretty amazing site, and our group became interested in watching the busy work of these ants.

As I am the biology teacher in the group, my friends began to ask me questions, such as "How do they lift an object that seems as big as they are?"  Other than knowing that they are insects and undergo complete metamorphosis, I had few answers to offer the group.  Since I love being able to spout off biological facts to anyone who will listen, I knew that I had some research to do about ants.

These are some amazing facts that I discovered:

1.   Ants can lift objects that are 20 to 50 times their own body weight.  

2.   Ants live 45 to 60 days.

3.   The ant brain only contains 250,000 cells.  It would take a colony of 40,000 ants to have the same brain size as one human.

4.   Ants have powerful jaws that open from side to side.  They cannot swallow food.  They swallow the juice from the food as they chew.

5.   There are over 10,000 species of ants.  

6.   Each ant colony has one or more queens.  The job of the queen is to lay eggs.

7.  Worker ants are sterile.  Their job is to look after the queen, take care of the eggs and larvae, search for food, clean up the nest, and defend the nest.

8.   Fertile males have one job only.  They mate with the queen and usually die shortly after.

9.   Ants have an amazing ability to communicate with each other.  They use their antennae for tactile communication as well as for smell.  They use chemicals to alert other ants of danger or to lead them to a promising food source.  A trail of scent (pheromone) is used to lead other ants to a source of food.  Cave ants use high pitched squeaks to communicate in the dark.

10.   Some ants live in a mutualistic relationships with plants.  The acacia ant lives in the huge thorns of the acacia tree.  In return, the ant protects the plant from being eaten by herbivores.

11.   Ants evolved 130 million years ago and lived alongside the dinosaurs.

12.   Ants were farmers before humans.  Many species of ants grow and cultivate fungi to support the hive.

13.   Ants are found in almost every corner of the world.  They are not found in Antarctica, Greenland and a few other remote islands.

14.   Ants do not have lungs.  They breathe through a set of spiracles and trachea, which is essentially a bunch of holes along their abdomen.

Here are some links to sites for more information and for some pretty amazing pictures:

National Geographic:  Ants

10 Things About Ants You Didn't Know

7 Reasons Ants Will Inherit the Earth

Happy Teaching!

Who wants FREE teaching materials?

Yep, all are FREE!

You will definitely want to check this out.  I have been meaning to write about this for weeks, but with the end of school madness, I am just now getting around to it.  "Mrs. O", a teacher/author from TeachersPayTeachers.com, put together an amazing list of free teaching materials.  These  materials are always available for free from TpT, but Mrs. O organized these materials into one document.   The document consists of hundreds of links to the free materials and the links are organized by grade level and subject area.

Hundreds of Freebies For Your Classroom!

As you can see from the Table of Contents, there is something for everyone here.  Be sure to bookmark or save this.  It will be a treasure trove when you start the new school year!!

Happy Teaching!!