Best Plant Ecology Topic?
If you were to teach a single class period on plant ecology (to bio majors who have had an ecology class but not a plant ecology class) in which you wanted to demonstrate both how very cool plant ecology is and what a great teacher you are, what would you teach?
6 comments:
I would include kelp forests but those might not be classified as plants depending on your textbook. But probably something rainforesty. I dunno. I want to hear what the plant people think. :-)
Something that YOU personally love to talk about. Prairies? Plant-human interactions?
I'm reading the Serpent and the Rainbow about the ethnobotanist Wade Davis who figured out the components of the voodoo potions that turn people into zombies. A very scientific explanation for it all. But it might be a little deep for just one class. Though it ties in culture and African history. What about something directly about the beech/maple or whatever forests of West Virginia., and Native Americans and settlers? Are there official old growth forests left? My understanding of the native ecosystems of western PA is paltry, I remember only one class period it being taught in college plant taxonomy.
Thoughts so far: epiphytes in general, epiphytes and how they have similar adaptations to desert plants, convergent evolution and desert plants, mycorhizzal associations, community diversity and grasslands, garden ecology, the ecology of a lawn as a summary of basic concepts, pollination, parasites mistletoes and mycotrophs. Ugh. I want something that is conceptual (not just a list of terms or pretty pictures) and that I can have students do something during the lecture, but something that I can easily control and in which I can show pretty pictures.
This class will be in Colorado, by the way, and I will also be seperately talking about prairie plant dynamics and the wonders of ethnobotany and what I do.
That is a tough assignment. I agree with Irene that it should be something you can get excited talking about. I also agree that it should be based on teaching a concept and then you could have lots of cool examples. Mutualisms might work. You could include fungi/plant mutualisms and also tropical mutualisms (seed dispersal, etc.). That would let you include photos of neat animals in addition to cool plants.
I think I would talk about plant communities varying along altitude gradients, maybe. And probably I would include pollinators in there somewhere. Maybe comparing plant-pollinator relationships at high altitudes or high latitudes with those at low? Looking at pollination syndromes would would tie in mutualisms and natural selection, and it could be something they observe in CO.
But it sounds like you have many cool ideas already!
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