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    Ain't No Mountain Pine Enough: A Case Study of How Mountain Pine Beetles are Affecting Ecosystem Processes
    This case study engages students in generating hypotheses and predictions, analyzing and interpreting data, critically evaluating contrasting results in science, and thinking about feedbacks...

    Keywords: population biologycarbon cyclingSpecies-habitat interactions

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    Biodiversity Show and Tell: An Accessible Activity to Encourage Students to Explore the Tree of Life
    An appreciation of organismal diversity is a requirement for understanding evolution and ecology, and can serve as a source of amazement and wonder that inspires students to enjoy biology. However,...

    Keywords: EvolutionecologyBiodiversity

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    A Lesson on Matter and Energy at the Organismal Scale: Linking Patterns and Processes Across Diverse Taxa
    Pathways and transformations of energy and matter (PTEM) are a conceptually challenging but essential component of biological literacy. Curricular gaps about PTEM nevertheless remain; although...

    Keywords: plantsenergyAnimalsfungimatterorganismal scale

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    Life Is Just a Game: An Active Learning Activity to Teach Life History Evolution
    A novel activity was designed to introduce students to the concepts of natural selection and life history using an active-learning, constructivist format. It consisted of two parts: 1) a brief...

    Keywords: Evolutionlife historytrade-offsdiversityNatural Selection

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    What is Speciation, How Does It Occur, and Why Is It Important for Conservation?
    Speciation provides a framework for classifying biodiversity on Earth and is a central concept in evolutionary biology. To help undergraduate students learn about speciation, we designed a...

    Keywords: EvolutionconservationGenetic DriftSpeciationNatural SelectionBiological species conceptgene flowMorphological species conceptPhylogenetic species concept

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    Assessing Urban Biodiversity With the eBird Citizen Science Project: A Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) Module
    The eBird citizen science module takes advantage of technology tools and online resources developed by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (http://ebird.org) to achieve several learning...

    Keywords: datacitizen sciencecommunityBiodiversitySpecieshypothesishabitat

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    Teaching Biodiversity with Museum Specimens in an Inquiry-Based Lab
    In response to the growth of biology datasets and broad efforts to digitize data, an increasingly important skill for science students is the management and analysis of large datasets. We designed...

    Keywords: data analysisnatural historyphylogenyBiodiversitymammalsAllen's RuleBergmann's Ruleecogeographymuseum research

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    Science Behind the Lesson: It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Biomechanics!
    Active flight is a specialized mode of movement found in insects, birds, and mammals. The anatomy, morphology, physiology, and ecology of flying taxa has changed over evolutionary time. Researchers...

    Keywords: EvolutionecologybatphysiologyAnatomybiomechanicsbirdFlightinsect

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    The Avocado Lab: An Inquiry-Driven Exploration of an Enzymatic Browning Reaction
    Typical biochemistry labs exploring basic enzyme activity rely on costly, time-consuming protein purification and rarely explore enzyme function in situ. Further, complex purification procedures...

    Keywords: enzymescontrolsenzyme inhibition

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    Mice, Acorns, and Lyme Disease: a Case Study to Teach the Ecology of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
    Ebola, Zika, the recall of contaminated lettuce - these are just a few recent outbreaks making headlines. Students should be able to connect what they learn in their biology courses to explain...

    Keywords: epidemiologyEcological changeInfectious disease ecologyReservoirsTransmission cycle

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    Using Structured Decision Making to Explore Complex Environmental Issues
    Environmental issues are inherently complex, often requiring multiple interested parties to come together before agreeing on a solution. Structured decision making is a tool used by federal and...

    Keywords: interdisciplinarysocio-ecological systemsscience policystakeholderstructured decision making

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    Forensic Phylogenetics: Implementing Tree-thinking in a Court of Law
    Here we describe an in-class activity developed for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity (BioEE1780) at Cornell University, an introductory course required of all biology majors. This activity...

    Keywords: phylogeneticsTree thinkingparaphyly

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    CURE-all: Large Scale Implementation of Authentic DNA Barcoding Research into First-Year Biology Curriculum
    Growing calls in science education reform have emphasized wide-scale engagement of first-year undergraduate students in authentic research experiences; however, large course enrollments, inadequate...

    Keywords: phylogeneticsbioinformaticsBiodiversityprocess of sciencetaxonomyPCRDNADNA sequencegel electrophoresis

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    Quantifying and Visualizing Campus Tree Phenology
    Large enrollment courses present a challenge for instructors who want to engage students in authentic science practices that fit the recommendations of Vision & Change. Our lesson provides a...

    Keywords: ecologyBiodiversityphenologyplant biology

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    Sequence Similarity: An inquiry based and "under the hood" approach for incorporating molecular sequence alignment in introductory undergraduate biology courses
    Introductory bioinformatics exercises often walk students through the use of computational tools, but often provide little understanding of what a computational tool does "under the...

    Keywords: BLASTmultiple sequence alignmentsequence similarityphylogramZika virusAlgorithmScoring Matrix

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    A Team-Based Approach to Course Development Involving Undergraduate Researchers
    Development of an undergraduate laboratory course can be a challenge, because of the need to balance both logistical and pedagogical considerations. We piloted a team-based approach to developing...

    Keywords: student researchcourse development

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    Using Place-Based Economically Relevant Organisms to Improve Student Understanding of the Roles of Carbon Dioxide, Sunlight, and Nutrients in Photosynthetic Organisms
    Biology students require broad preparation for diverse careers including agriculture, natural resource management, and laboratory research. Concurrent with this need, employers are seeking...

    Keywords: energyphotosynthesisbiomass

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    Building Trees: Introducing evolutionary concepts by exploring Crassulaceae phylogeny and biogeography
    Teaching evolutionary theory is foundational for all biological sciences and a key aspect of overall science literacy. The conceptual framework for understanding evolution relies on thinking...

    Keywords: EvolutionphylogeneticsTree thinkingbiogeography

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    Using QIIME to Interpret Environmental Microbial Communities in an Upper Level Metagenomics Course
    Metagenomics is rapidly evolving due to advances in sequencing technologies and bioinformatics, but without proper training to interpret these datasets, student understanding remains limited. Aimed...

    Keywords: microbiome

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    Your Tax Dollars at Work: A mock grant writing experience centered on scientific process skills
    A successful scientist combines skill, creativity, and the art of persuasion to excel in his or her field of study. Critically important for the professional scientist is the ability to not only...

    Keywords: researchexperimental designprocess of sciencePeer reviewgrant writingPecha Kuchaproposal

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