A few years ago several colleagues and I came up with the idea of using Dr. Tigga Kingston's research on the ecology of rainforest bats in Malaysia as the focus for a biology curriculum for grades 4 - 8. Unfortunately, the project has never made it to completion, but we have come up with a cool website that contains lots of information that might be useful to you. If you get bored sometime take a look at the website. I may be biased, but I think it is pretty awesome.
http://www.ttu-mbea.org/
I have used the data that Tigga and her students collected as the basis for a number of exercises that I think might be useful to someone teaching ecology. I will try to post these as they become relevant.
I have added as section to the Ecology for Teachers book called "Teaching Resources". If you click on that link it will take you to a more complete discussion of the project and contains a link to an exercise using the bat data to calculate population growth rates of bats.
I have been fascinated with bats. When I was growing up in the Philippines, they were such a nuisance that my dad would have this long wooden stick to scare them off. I also go mountain trekking in Mambucal Falls - a big attraction in Negros Occidental, just down South of the Philippines. It's 2 hours of driving but it's a magnificent place with a hot spring. I think I only went as far as the third waterfalls. My family forbade me to go further since old folks are very superstitious of what's out there. But Mambucal Falls is home to a lot of bats. Old folks around those area think that 'witches" uses bats to scout for food. :)) I hope you get to visit it soon Prof. McGinley.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of a field journal. I also wish there was a lot of tropical forests around West Texas that I could have taken my students.
The website about bats would be a good educational site to get into a web quest activity in the classroom. Would this ever be considered? I think I could make one worksheet to coincide with the webquest based on this website. Just a thought... ;)
Mark,
ReplyDeleteOur Cell Biology professor last summer was Caleb Phillips. He has done research with bats from Guatemala, as I recall. Have you worked with him or are you familiar with his work?
Charity, the tropical bats are really cool. One of Dr. Kingston's graduate students is currently a Fulbright Scholar studying cave bats in the Philippines. She is having trouble because one of her faculty collaborators got sick after visiting a cave and is convince she was influenced by "evil spirits" living in the caves. Thus, Kendra is having trouble getting access to some caves. I might have expected superstitious beliefs from "normal people" but was surprised to hear that they exist even among educated scientists.
ReplyDeleteDr. Kingston is currently working with a group of people interested in the Bats of West Texas so they may be opportunities for educators and their students to interact with this group. I will let you know more about that if as the project develops. Maybe they will reach a point where they would like to bounce some ideas off of some teachers.
I don't know what Web Quest is so I can't make any comments about its utility. If you are interested in working with the data on the MBEA website to develop a new activity that would be great. Let me know if you need any help.
Gordon, I do know Caleb, but I am not very familiar with his work in Guatemala. Surprisingly, over the last 25 years or so Texas Tech has been one of hot spots for the study of tropical bats in both the American and SE Asian tropics.
ReplyDeleteMark, I enjoyed the article, especially the portion on mathematical modeling of competition. I am more of a math guy than most people. Regarding the activity, I am probably missing something. I looked at the 2009 MBEA capture data from the field data. I only saw the capture of one each of the genus of bats, so I am not sure what we are to analyze. I would really be interested in seeing the results of your analysis. Thanks.
ReplyDelete