AUTHOR
Amanda M. Little
University of Wisconsin-Stout (littlea@uwstout.edu)
THE ECOLOGICAL QUESTION
How do relationships between taxonomic richness and environmental variables differ in permanent and temporary wetland habitats?
ECOLOGICAL CONTENT
Species richness, environmental variation, habitat permanency, aquatic ecology
WHAT STUDENTS DO
- Design hypotheses about how wetland hydroperiod may affect different groups of species (Knowledge, Comprehension, Application)
- Produce and analyze graphs comparing permanent and temporary wetlands, with an emphasis on understanding linear models (Comprehension, Synthesis, Analysis)
- Summarize relationships between environmental attributes and ecological communities (Synthesis)
- Connect differences in relationships back to wetland hydroperiod (Comprehension, Synthesis)
- Advanced student extension: Connect difference in relationships to wetland hydroperiod across multiple years (Comprehension, Synthesis)
SKILLS
- Hypothesis development
- Data visualization using spreadsheets or statistical program
- Data interpretation
- Data quality evaluation
- Connecting ecological concepts
STUDENT-ACTIVE APPROACHES
Guided-inquiry, peer feedback, predict-observe-explain, small group discussion, possible jigsaw
ASSESSABLE OUTCOMES
annotated bibliography, proposed hypotheses and data analysis, written interpretation of figures and statistical analyses
SOURCE
Data were collected as part of a five-year research study of ephemeral pond wetlands.
DOWNLOADS
Description of Resource Files:
Each data set contains three worksheets. The first worksheet provides definitions and other information about variables. The second worksheet consists of the environmental and species richness variables for each wetland. The final worksheet contains some species information for a brief exploration of community composition.
- 2013 community data
- 2014 community data
- Ephemeral Ponds Video Information
- Accompanying powerpoint
- Results of plant community analysis
- Results of invertebrate community analysis
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Jim Church and Matt Kuchta for collaboration on data collection and project administration. The QUBES DIG into Data Faculty Mentoring Network provided invaluable feedback, structure, and ideas for this module. The University of Wisconsin-Stout provided support for this project. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant DEB-1256142 to Little and Church. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
CITATION
Amanda M. Little. February 2018, posting date. Environment-Richness Relationships in Ephemeral and Permanent Wetlands: Guided Inquiry with Graph InterpretationTeaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology, Vol. 13: Practice #5 [online]. https://tiee.esa.org/vol/v13/issues/data_sets/little/abstract.html