College Labs: Ecology
Being outdoors and observing the natural world is an important part of any ecology class, but ecological experiments generally require substantially more time than a typical lab period offers. The simulated experiments in our EcoBeaker® suite of labs allow students to explore important ecological ideas on their own by recreating famous ecology experiments. The conceptual focus of the labs makes them a nice complement to field studies. More than 20 individual labs cover the full range of ecology topics from individual behavior to ecosystems. They work great as both in-class and homework assignments. Several of the most popular EcoBeaker labs are geared towards the ecology portion of non-majors and introductory biology series.
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Ecology Labs
EcoBeaker: Isle RoyaleThis popular laboratory explores basic population biology concepts including exponential and logistic growth and carrying capacity. It is based on the textbook example of a predator-prey system involving wolves and moose on an island in Lake Superior. Students start out by characterizing the growth of a colonizing population of moose in the absence of predators. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Keystone PredatorThis laboratory recreates the famous experiments of Paine and colleagues in the Pacific Northwest with the sea star Pisaster (and 8 other marine intertidal species). Students do transplant experiments to figure out competitive relationships and sample gut contents to construct a food web. Next they use their data to predict what will happen when each predator is removed from the system. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Nutrient Pollution (formerly "Sewage")What will happen if your city starts dumping lots of extra sewage into your local lake? ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Intermediate Disturbance HypothesisUsing a model of succession from grasses to trees, students start out by observing a successional sequence without disturbance. Then they get to start setting fires. By systematically varying the size and frequency of fires, they recreate the standard textbook graph of the intermediate disturbance hypothesis showing that species diversity is highest at intermediate levels of disturbance. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Niches and Competitive ExclusionThis fun and engaging laboratory, affectionately referred to as "the bunny lab", explores ecological niches and the competitive exclusion principle. Can four identical species of rabbits coexist in a yard with a limited amount of the only source of food (lettuce)? What would happen if a rabbit with a broader diet (e.g., lettuce and carrots) were to invade the yard? ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Corridors, Stepping Stones and ButterfliesUsing a simulation of a population of Fender's blue butterfly, a threatened species that is endemic to western Oregon (USA) prairies, students try to figure out the best habitat restoration scheme given pre-existing patches of prairie. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Oil SpillsIn this lab students work as advisors for a company that engineers bacterial strains that consume oil. When oil spills occur it is important to remove the oil rapidly to minimize harm to the local ecosystem. This can be achieved either by using highly efficient bacteria (large 'r') or by transporting large numbers of bacteria to the spill sites (large N0). ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Limiting NutrientsIn this lab, students grow three different species of algae in isolation in a medium containing nitrogen, phosphorous, and iron. For each algal species they have to figure out which nutrient is limiting, and what happens when that nutrients is increased. Then, based on the individual growth trajectories, students try to predict which will win out when they are grown in pairs or all together. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Barnacles and TidesThis is a recreation of the classic experiments of Connell on why the barnacles Chthamalus and Balanus have distinct distributions in the rocky intertidal zone of Scotland. Students first observe the distributions, then try to tease apart the causes through a series of removal and transplant experiments. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Go FishAs "virtual" commercial fisheries managers, students must decide on a strategy for fishing that maximizes their profits while minimizing extinction risk. The first sections of the lab investigate fixed-catch, fixed-effort, and adaptive management strategies for regulating fisheries. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Aquatic Trophic CascadesIn this lab, students try the classic test of adding fish to a fish-free lake, observing the effect on the abundances of different sized zooplankton and phytoplankton. They then conduct experiments to try and figure out why these changes occur. The model includes green algae, blue-green algae, Bosmina, Daphnia, minnows, and trout. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: An Owl's LifeStudents measure birth and death rates of spotted owls throughout a 3-stage life cycle. They then incorporate these measurements into a life table and do a simple sensitivity analysis on the life table. The life table is constructed in a separate spreadsheet (such as Excel®), and a section of the lab guides students through this construction. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Island BiogeographyThis laboratory simulates a mainland with many species and an island whose size and distance from the mainland can be changed. Students move the island and modify its size to see how the equilibrium number of species is influenced, and then measure colonization and extinction rates to attempt to explain the pattern(s) uncovered. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Prairie SamplingThis laboratory explores sampling strategies and dispersion patterns using a model of a prairie plant community. Students first learn how to estimate population sizes from samples using scaling factors. Next, they collect and graph sampling data to evaluate the importance of random versus biased sampling. They also analyze how sampling effort influences the accuracy of population estimates. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Sick FishA new fish farm is being established and its managers want advice on preventing diseases. Using model fish pens, students try changing density of fish, percent vaccinated, and antibiotic regimes, determining optimal parameters for each of these factors. They then must suggest a strategy involving combinations of those parameters for preventing two different diseases among the fish. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Varieties of CompetitionIn this lab in students play the role of "ecological detectives" presented with several different communities of four mysterious species. They are asked to figure out the relationships between pairs of species by doing standard ecological experiments (removals, additions, etc.). Among the potential relationships are scramble competition, predation, indirect competition, and so on. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Mother Nature's SupermarketThe laboratory simulates gophers foraging in different spatial configurations of food sources, where they can't see the food and so must make decisions based on their recent foraging success. Students manipulate two parameters controlling these decisions and must optimize those parameters for each food configuration. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Predator Avoidance in Aquatic SystemsThe objective of this lab is to keep zooplankton survival high in the face of fish predation by manipulating several characteristics of the zooplankton, including their swimming speed, reproductive rate, and vertical migration behavior. Explore one reason why vertical migration is so common... ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Mark and RecaptureStudents try mark/recapture sampling on a population of pigeons in a park. Initially the population is closed with no mortality or other complicating factors, and students can manipulate the sampling effort, resampling effort, and time to wait between sampling and resampling. ... Read more + Add to course collection |
EcoBeaker: Sampling Under PressureThe model in this lab distributes a number of species around an unexplored area of forests. Students are asked to come up with sampling strategies that will give them the information they would need to determine what parts of the forest should be put into reserves, given that they are allowed to choose but that some of the forest will be cut down. ... Read more + Add to course collection |