Hi folks, I mentioned a resource I was considering some time back; it is now up and running.
Applicable to biology/zoology/evolution/stats courses. Cheap, hands-on, hypothesis-driven lab activities. http://wikieducator.org/Digital_Coyote The current summary: - A virtual museum of carefully photographed, calibrated coyote skull images. - Still growing, but with 36 skulls from 12 US states and 1 Canadian province, I think the resource is ready for use. - Measurements accurate to within 2mm (more typically 1 mm) can be taken from the photographs. - Students can test some hypotheses immediately: - H1: Eastern coyote skulls are larger than those from the west. Published literature confirms that the eastern population includes DNA of wolf origin. Body weight measurements are larger in the east. But do the skulls confirm the pattern? - H2: Northern skulls are larger than southern skulls. Bergmann's rule would suggest this hypothesis. We have enough material online to quickly test this. Once our Texas skulls are added we will have a more robust data set available. - Statistics students hungry to generate their own data could use the collection as source data for regression and ANOVA. The future: - Our total collection of coyote skulls includes 60 skulls and we intend to upload all of them as time permits. We are slow in uploading because the calibration check on each image takes time, but we'll add 2 to 4 per week until May. - We have a modest collection of 24 domestic dog skulls that we will add. This will serve to compare variation in a naturally selected population Vs an artificially selected population. - We'd love to see a parallel set of skulls from another wild population (the 2 populations of black-backed jackals? dingos?). If there is a curator interested in digitally sharing a collection please let me know. How can you help? - Use the resource and give us feedback - Donate images of skulls from your collection (our Kansas skull is one such donation). - Develop and share laboratory exercises using the collection. - Send us skulls of known origin to be added to the research collection (non-cleaned skulls should be frozen to kill insect pests and sealed in plastic bags before shipping; let me know they are coming [email protected]). If you have arbitrary skulls gathering dust we'll put them to good use in our general teaching collection: Dr. Declan McCabe; Biology Box 283; Saint Michael's College; Colchester VT 05403; USA Trades considered also. Our New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona skulls were gratefully accepted donations. WE folks: thanks for your support and hosting this project. Declan -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
