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Biodiversity Counts! Making sense of diversity metrics and graphs

Author(s): Ana Elisa Garcia Vedrenne1, Maria Rebolleda Gomez1

University of California, Irvine

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Summary:
In this lesson students 1) become familiar with various graphs that are used to study diversity patterns within and across sites, 2) learn about some of the questions that can be addressed by metabarcoding studies, and 3) reflect on an interview…

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In this lesson students 1) become familiar with various graphs that are used to study diversity patterns within and across sites, 2) learn about some of the questions that can be addressed by metabarcoding studies, and 3) reflect on an interview with evolutionary ecologist Maria Rebolleda Gomez, who collected the data used in the lesson.

Description

Level: Introductory

Course type: Lecture / Dry lab 

Delivery mode:  In person, synchronous

Students: First year, mostly majors

Number of students: 20 - 80 students

Estimated duration of activity: 90 min

Materials included: lesson guide, presentation slides for in-class activity, 1 page instructor guide, pre-class basics video and quiz, in-class worksheets.

Quantitative learning objective(s)

  1. Analyze data and/or create graphs/figures related to the concepts from this lesson.
  2. Reflect on your perceptions about using graphs or figures in biology

Diversity/equity/inclusion learning objective(s):

  1. Reflect on your perceptions of people who do biology.
  2. Compare your own interests and/or identities to those of people who do biology.

Content learning objective(s):

  1. Interpret diversity metrics (e.g. alpha and beta diversity).
  2. Use metabarcoding data to compare communities.
  3. Identify the research question being addressed in an experiment.

 

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