Biogeography? lewelma or anyone else?

[Dmmetler]

Anyone have a clue on resources for biogeography which would be appropriate for DD10 (upper high school/low college level in bio, not super-thrilled with geography, and definitely not with human geography?)

[Junie]

Are you wanting to create something yourself, or do you want something open-and-go?

 

I'm currently looking at Around the World in 180 Days in order to put together a World Lit/Geography course.  You might be able to use it as a springboard to science/biology, but it would take a fair amount of prep work.

 

 

[quark]

This might be at a too advanced level (or maybe not!) but the International Biogeography Society website has free downloads of some of the journal issues.

 

Is she interested in living books? These look fascinating:

The Monkey's Voyage: How Improbable Journeys Shaped the History of Life

The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction

[Dmmetler]

she's already signed up for a class using Mapping the World by Heart, so mostly I want resources to bridge off of that and let her take it in a biogeography direction and apply it more to her interests. i insisted that she do geography in some way, mostly because it's a topic I fail at teaching (I have visual-spatial processing off the bottom of the chart. I can remember where to go based on landmarks, but reading a map and applying it to actual land...well, that's why I have a GPS. So I've mostly ignored geography).

[lewelma]

Hey dmmetler,  just saw this.  I did a grad class in biogeography way back when.  We did a massive group research project to help Nevada try to figure out how best to save the desert tortoise.  They were in the middle of making a land-swap deal with Los Vegas and our professor was a part of the team figuring out the best option.  Back then we made large 1m square see-through plastic maps that we would overlay on top of each other.  Each map was for a different issue that we needed to consider -- rainfall, food supplies, fire-prone areas, human population size, desert tortoise population, dune buggy/dirt bike play areas etc. Then we had to plan the size and design of the park *system* that would statistically ensure that the species would not go extinct.  We needed to consider the size of each park piece, probability of extinction inside one piece, density of animals, reproduction rate, number of parks, connections between parks, i/emigration rates, safety of food resources, population size and expected changes in predator populations, etc.  All this with a 2000 year plan. We had to write up a huge report to give to the government. It was awesome and fascinating.

 

I don't remember reading any textbooks.  I'm sure we had something, but what made it interesting and exciting was trying to figure out a real, politically-possible solution to a current problem.

 

I learned by doing, rather than reading.  Perhaps she could do something similar?  Get an idea from a professor to design a park system for an endangered reptile and run with it for fun.

 

Ruth in NZ 

[Dmmetler]

I wonder if it's the same project? We went to a talk on a desert tortoise project that has apparently been around for 50+years, with all these side shoots and variations. It's interesting stuff.

 

The Hellbender, Gopher Tortoise, or Indigo snake might be a good one for her to look at, or possibly the recently delisted Lake Erie Watersnake. We know researchers working with all of the above at this point, so population surveys are something we can get pretty easily, and those are three very different ecosystems.

[lewelma]

I worked on the desert tortoise project in 1992.  At that time, the focus was going to be on relocating a bunch of tortoises to the new park system that was going to be created so that Las Vegas could expand.  

 

What I liked so much about biogeography is that it pulls from so many different disciplines: population ecology, community ecology, earth science, human habitation, statistics, conservation biology, politics, etc.  You do research on each of these fields for your 1 specific species and then you have to synthesize an answer to a real life problem.  

 

Although the overlays I'm sure are done on a computer now a days, the large clear sheets were excellent for being about to make changes easily and really see what was going on.  We simply traced maps on them, marked them up for each issue with red lines and hatches, and then laid them on top of each other to see where the overlaps were. We could all stand around the table and see close detail but over a large area (1m square).  Low tech, but very very effective.   I would think that a small monitor could be much more difficult to get the big picture and the detail at the same time.

[bakpak]

I received 'Song of the Dodo' as a senior honors award from my Biology Dept the year it came out. I remember loving it and felt so flattered! Also, the Beak of the Finch (about Darwin's finches) is a great easy read about watching evolution (and phenotypic plasticity) in action . Lots of followup stories/research articles on birds and other wildlife of the Galapagos. I'm sure after reading about the research on birds, she could do a followup lit review on evolution of reptiles on the various islands (or another system of islands).