How can we help our students bolster their mental health and perhaps even increase retention while addressing common learning objectives of Introductory Biology courses? Getting students outside and committed to monitoring and improving small natural areas on campus may hold some answers. Two different types of plant community diversity assessment that can be used in almost any natural space are presented here. The first activity focuses on assessing species richness and helping students recognize features of plants that may be useful for identification such as leaf arrangement. The second activity allows students to use the user-friendly plant identification app Seek! by inaturalist to identify plants and measure Simpson?s Diversity Index of a transect. These lab activities are part of a month-long “Nature-based” module used in a Non-majors Introductory Biology II lab but could easily be modified to fit different courses or time constraints. No special equipment is needed, and students do not need any background in plant identification. Topics addressed by the lab activities in this workshop include community diversity, general plant anatomy, species accumulation curves, and scientific process.
Keywords: community ecology, Biodiversity, plant identification, ecological sampling
University of Victoria (2022)
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