Thanks for bringing this topic up Dr. Inouye.
You know what they say...."Specialists learn more and more about less
and less until someday they will know everything about nothing".
It's even happening at the High School level. I was once given carte
blanche to to re-design an ailing advanced Biology program at a high
school. Was heavily criticized for choosing Ecology and some of the
classic discoveries in Biology as the theme of the class. Parents were
the biggest critics. They just didn't see how the content of my course
was going to get their children in medical school. They got over it and
it was a good decision. I tried to use Biochemistry and Genetics without
losing focus on the bigger picture. It was a fairly large, rural high
school and I was quite surprised every spring when I would put a small
bowl of tadpoles on my desk, and count the number of kids that didn't
have a clue as to what they were. Pretty sad state of affairs....
Have a now retired friend from Penn State who did most of his research
on Peccaries, he told me on several occasions that he was what was left
of a dying breed. I found his work, and especially that dealing with
hibernation biology and physiology to be incredibly fascinating.
Thank for anyone's feedback on this all important issue. Am copying this
to several High School Bio lists and am curious what their feelings are
on this.
Thank you.
Mike Nolan
On 5/14/2014 10:07 AM, David L. McNeely wrote:
I have been observing this for some time now. Organisms and their habitats are
being written out of biology, so far as direct experience with them is
concerned. We soon will have no means of knowing what is going on in nature,
as no one will be investigating nature, or even have a clue as to how to do so.
It is somewhat disconcerting to attend conferences and witness paper
presentations where it is clear that the presenter has never seen a living,
wild specimen of the organism being reported on and would not know how to go
about finding one.
The Southwestern Association of Naturalists has recently approved, to be
awarded for the first time at its annual meeting in San Diego next April, a new
Student Field Natural History Award. Details concerning this competition will
be available on the SWAN web site and in the annual call for papers, but
essentially it provides a prestigious award and a monetary prize for the
outstanding paper which includes a substantial field component presented by a
student member at the annual meeting. More details will appear on the SWAN web
site and in the annual call for papers for next year. To qualify for the
competition, the investigation reported on must have been carried out on the
natural history (essentially ecology and evolution) of organisms in the
southwestern portion of North America (as defined by SWAN) where they occur in
their environments.
I would encourage ESA and other societies to consider implementing awards for
field based studies.
David McNeely
---- David Inouye <[email protected]> wrote:
I'm posting this for a colleague who wanted to remain anonymous but
would be interested in your comments. We've suffered the same loss of
field-based courses at the University of Maryland, but I think for
other reasons.
David Inouye
My ecology/evolution/plant diversity students are always shocked when
I tell them about one way in which the shift towards genomics in
ecology and evolution is largely responsible for the disappearance of
almost all field courses in my department (and probably
elsewhere). I don't think that this is exactly what you had in mind
regarding an example of "how rapidly and significantly ecological
science and evolution are changing", but I don't think it's too off-track.
We now have six evolutionary biologists in my department (including
myself), and only one of us (me) does any field work other than to
find-and-grind organisms for genomics work. The rest is computer
modeling and lab work, conducting Petri-dish and vial-based
experiments with flies or microorganisms. Not surprisingly, these
lab-based faculty are not only pale and wan, but they're completely
uninterested in -- and dismiss as too "noisy" -- field experiments
aimed to detect the process or outcome of natural selection in wild
populations. So, not only are they unable to teach field-based
courses (or even to run local field trips), but they're now raising a
cohort of graduate students who are exactly the same. While genomics
can answer certain kinds of questions in evolutionary ecology and
detect phylogenetic patterns that population-based studies of natural
selection cannot, I think it's really important to inform
undergraduates about this major political and financial shift in
evolutionary research, and to point out the kinds of questions that
cannot be addressed with genomics.
Invariably, these students are very surprised to learn that this is
part of the story explaining the demise of field courses. At my
institution, their lack of field experience prevents them from being
outraged, as they don't know what they're missing.
--
David McNeely
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