Section 2: What is the relationship between ant-following birds and army ants?

Purpose: To practice interpreting graphical presentation of experimental results; to determine the type of ecological relationship between army ants and ant-following birds.

Teaching Approach: "turn-to-your-neighbor"

Cognitive Skills: (see Bloom's Taxonomy) — knowledge, comprehension, interpretation

Student Assessment: essay quiz

:: BACKGROUND :: :: FIGURES :: :: STUDENT INSTRUCTIONS :: :: NOTES TO FACULTY ::

STUDENT INSTRUCTIONS

Do ant-following birds have a positive (mutualism), neutral (commensalisms) or negative (parasitism) effect on army ant foraging success? With a partner or with a small group, use the Step One-Step Two approach, described below, to interpret the results of Wrege et al.'s (2005) experiment.

Step One: Describe the graph and what it shows. Make sure you understand how the figure is set up, what the axes show, and what information is depicted. Carefully describe the overall patterns in the data.
Step Two: Try to interpret the data. What do they tell you about the type of relationship between birds and army ants?

Be prepared to explain the graph and your conclusions from it to the class.

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