PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #21: Education.
Wednesday, August 8, 2001. Presentation from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM. Exhibition Hall
Classroom inquiry into the effects of urbanization on bruchid beetles (Family: Bruchidae) in the Sonoran Desert.
Wallace, John1, Craig, Timothy 1, Elser, Monica2, 1 2
ABSTRACT- The study of plant-insect interactions is fundamental to an understanding of any ecosystem. Public school classrooms throughout the Phoenix metropolitan area are participating in ecological research conducted by the Central Arizona - Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research (CAPLTER) project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Teachers learn the natural history of native organisms and receive instruction in research methods in workshops conducted by university faculty. The teachers then teach students to use protocols and relational databases available on the Internet to study patterns of variation in local populations that are due to urbanization. In one study students examined the variation in herbivory between urban and desert populations of bruchid beetle. Seedpods from the blue palo verde, Cercidium floridum, were collected from urban landscapes and remote desert sites. The number of eggs on the pod surface and the number of emergence holes were observed for each pod, and the results were analyzed using a t-test. Desert trees had a significantly lower number of seeds per pod than did the urban trees. The urban trees had significantly fewer emergence holes than the desert trees. Students posted their data on a web site where they could analyze their results and compare them with data collected by other classes. Data and analysis done by several classes will be displayed, along with feedback from teachers and students on value of this method for learning ecological principles.
KEY WORDS: Education, Bruchidae, herbivory, plant-insect interaction