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Observing the Birds of El Paso: Revisiting historical localities online and in the field

Author(s): Julie Marie Schlichte1, Vicky Zhuang, Phillip Lavretsky2

1. The University of Texas at El Paso 2. University of Texas at El Paso

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Summary:
In this set of activities, students are introduced to several features and use cases of museum databases to understand the importance of historical natural history specimens and their data. Using this data, they can explore their local city with a…

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In this set of activities, students are introduced to several features and use cases of museum databases to understand the importance of historical natural history specimens and their data. Using this data, they can explore their local city with a new lens, in this case El Paso, Texas. Students explore a project page on the Arctos database that displays all collecting events of bird specimens in El Paso County, Texas and choose a locality that they wish to revisit. After describing species found at that locality online, students visit the site in person and make observations of what species are found there today. The lesson introduces students to concepts in migration, species distribution, and the value in revisiting historical locations while also connecting students to their local biodiversity and city.

Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 24 Feb 2024 doi:10.25334/4CZZ-VB44 - cite this

Keywords

  1. database
  2. Biodiversity
  3. Ornithology
  4. natural history museums
  5. species distributions
  6. distance learning
  7. Field Experiences

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  3. Activity Length
Contents:
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Description

Intended Audience:

The module was originally designed for the undergraduate level ornithology class. However, the module may be adapted for general biology courses with the assistance of iNaturalist and other identification resources.

Description:

This resource includes the file for instructions of the lab, as well as the link for the El Paso Birds Arctos project page, which contains the interactive map for students. The module can easily be adapted to a local city by generating similar maps linked to records on iDigBio or Arctos (See readme). Given that students may choose several different localities around the city, the second portion of the lab is intended to be conducted on the students’ own time.

Learning objectives:

1.    Use Arctos and other resources to explore the data of museum specimens    

2.    Conduct field observations of birds

3.    Describe why bird species may be found at certain times of the year; the day; the season 

(and not others)

4. Be able to explain why species may have been observed in the past, but not in the present.

 

This project was funded in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (CAGML-247505-OMLS-21)

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