Description
THE ISSUE
Biological control agents are used in a wide range of contexts to limit damage from pests. However, the broader ecological consequences of such agents often are unclear before ecological risk assessments are performed. This Figure Set guides students to think through potential consequences of using biological control agents, and then uses a specific study to challenge students to interpret results from laboratory and caged field experiments. This Figure Set also introduces the concept of functional responses to students.
FOUR DIMENSIONAL ECOLOGY EDUCATION (4DEE) FRAMEWORK
- Core Ecological Concepts:
- Organisms
- Resources and regulators
- Communities
- Predation
- Ecology Practices:
- Quantitative reasoning and computational thinking
- Data analysis and interpretation
- Designing and critiquing investigations
- Study design, familiarity with basic modes of ecological inquiry (description, comparison, experimentation, modeling)
- Evaluating claims
- Argument from evidence
- Working collaboratively
- Human-Environment Interactions:
- How humans shape and manage resources/ecosystems/the environment
- Natural resource management (biological control agents, ecological risk assessments)
- Cross-cutting Themes:
- Systems
- Biogeography
- alien/invasive species
STUDENT-ACTIVE APPROACHES
Think-pair-share, drawing predicted results, designing experiments
STUDENT ASSESSMENTS
answering questions on a worksheet, sharing responses with the class, and completing post-class homework that assesses understanding of key concepts
CLASS TIME
This Figure Set is designed to span one 75-minute class, or split over two 50-minute class sessions.
COURSE CONTEXT
This Figure Set is designed for upper-division undergraduate ecology courses.
Publication Date
2023
Publisher
Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology
Disciplines
Biology | Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Recommended Citation
Rosny Jean, Linda Auker, Suann Yang, and Jeremy Hsu. October 2023. Figure Set update: An inquiry-based module aligned with the 4DEE framework for teaching about functional responses and biological control. Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology, Vol. 19: Practice #8. https://tiee.esa.org/vol/v19/issues/figure_sets/jean/abstract.html
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Comments
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is an adaptation of a figure set originally developed by Jeremy Hsu in 2018 (Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology, Vol. 13: Figure Set #1 [online]. https://tiee.esa.org/vol/v13/issues/figure_sets/hsu/abstract.html). We thank the Ecological Society of America for support of this project, as well as the leaders and participants of ESA's Transforming Ecology Education Faculty Mentoring Network. This network is funded by the National Science Foundation (DBI 2120678).