Introduction |
| Anchor Video |
| Concept Map |
| Project Calendar |
| Lesson Plans |
| Letter to Parents |
| Assessments |
| Resources |
| Modifications |
| Grant |
Target audience – High school 9-12th grade / Biology & Chemistry
Project description – High school biology students will gather information about 4 endangered species native to Austin and compile this information in hopes of defining each species’ role in Dr. J. Floor Anthoni’s system of conservation. They will work with local environmental agencies like the Save Our Springs Alliance to collect information about these and other threatened organisms. After information has been gathered, students will attempt to determine whether an overall trend of decline is present among the animals of Central Texas. A poster session open to the public will be conducted at the end of the project. In addition, a website with the students’ presentations will be available for access online.
Driving question – How do animals interact with their environment?
Background
Central Texans have always prided themselves on living on some of the beautiful and lush land in all of Texas. This region, sometimes referred to as the Hill Country because of its rolling hills, includes such diverse geologic phenomena as the Edwards Aquifer, with it’s system of winding underground streams and caves, and the ancient Llano Uplift, made from granite inclusions that are over a billion years old. However, every decade, new species from this area are added to the threatened and even endangered animals list. In the past 20 years, 4 species that call the Austin area home have been added to the threatened list: the Golden-cheeked Warbler the Black-capped Viero, the Texas Blind Salamander, and the Barton Creek Salamander. Although many agencies have speculated as to the reasons of theses animals’ declining numbers, the only attempt to compile the data and present it to the community in a worthwhile manner has been performed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and they have done so with little emphasis on Central Texas and with little information on the animals that call Austin home.
In 2001, Dr. J. Floor Anthoni came up with a way to help save particular species from extinction in his article “Principles of Conservation.” He stressed the importance of collecting large amounts of information on the species of interest and educating the community of their potential fate. He also recognized that each threatened species has a different role in the overall push for conservation. These roles are defined by their significance in motivating the people to action and by how well they represent the overall decline of a community. Because of the amount of time and resources required to research these threatened organisms and put the decline of particular organisms’ in context with the decline of other organisms, the roles of the 4 previously mentioned Austin-area species is unknown. This information, however, could help identify the larger trends of extinction and degradation of the environment here in Central Texas.
High school biology students will gather information about 4 species native to Austin, the Golden-cheeked Warbler, the Black-capped Viero, the Texas Blind Salamander, and the Barton Creek Salamander, and compile this information in hopes of defining each species’ role in Dr. J. Floor Anthoni’s system of conservation. They will work with local environmental agencies like the Save Our Springs Alliance to collect information about these and other threatened organisms. They should be looking at one of the possible environmental factors such as salinity, climate, or reproduction regarding that species. After information has been gathered, students will attempt to determine whether an overall trend of decline is present among the animals of Central Texas. Students will present what they find to local elementary and middle schools and will post their data online.
Instruction for using special equipments such as salinity gauge would be included in the water salinity kit. In addition, some students may wish to collect the soil sample to analyze the environmental factors that contribute to the 4 species native to Austin. Dissecting microscope and microscope will be used to analyze these soil samples.
Compound Microscope tutorial
http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/microscopy.html
Dissection Microscope tutorial
http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/diss_scope.html
In addition, since students will be creating website for their project after the presentation; therefore, a tutorial on HTML is also helpful. This website allowed student to create and personalize their web pages.
http://poster.4teachers.org/