航空航天遥感在物种多样性研究与保护中的应用

人类活动导致全球范围内生物多样性丧失日趋严重。物种多样性是研究最为深入以及最贴近生物多样性管理的层次。物种多样性的研究往往受到多时空尺度生态过程的影响, 传统物种多样性调查方法受到人力物力影响, 局限性大, 物种多样性的研究与管理亟需整合不同来源的数据。遥感技术从传统的光学遥感阶段发展到不同平台、不同维度相结合的多源遥感阶段, 并逐渐进入以高空间分辨率和高光谱为特征、以激光雷达为前沿发展方向的综合遥感阶段。遥感技术因为其监测范围广、能监测人迹罕至地区以及长期可重复等特性, 为研究不同时空尺度的生态学科学问题提供了更新更优的研究手段。本文围绕种群动态、种间关系与群落多样性、功能属性及功能多样性以及生物多样性保护管理等生物多样性研究热点问题, 系统地论述了航空航天遥感技术在物种多样性研究与保护领域的应用, 总结了航空航天遥感技术在研究与物种多样性有关的主要生态学问题中的机遇与挑战。我们认为航空航天遥感技术利用多光谱甚至高光谱与激光技术从空中监测物种多样性, 从不同视角、基于不同光源提供了物种多样性不同侧面的信息, 能够减小地面调查强度, 在大范围和边远地区的物种多样性调查研究中有着至关重要的作用。依据光谱特性的物种判别以及依据激光雷达的三维结构量测将促进生物多样性的研究与管理, 加强遥感学家和生物多样性研究者的沟通交流将有助于促进不同时空尺度的生物多样性与遥感技术的结合。     

An integrated,modular approach to data science education in microbiology

We live in an increasingly data-driven world, where high-throughput sequencing and mass spectrometry platforms are transforming biology into an information science. This has shifted major challenges in biological research from data generation and processing to interpretation and knowledge translation. However, postsecondary training in bioinformatics, or more generally data science for life scientists, lags behind current demand. In particular, development of accessible, undergraduate data science curricula has the potential to improve research and learning outcomes as well as better prepare students in the life sciences to thrive in public and private sector careers. Here, we describe the Experiential Data science for Undergraduate Cross-Disciplinary Education (EDUCE) initiative, which aims to progressively build data science competency across several years of integrated practice. Through EDUCE, students complete data science modules integrated into required and elective courses augmented with coordinated cocurricular activities. The EDUCE initiative draws on a community of practice consisting of teaching assistants (TAs), postdocs, instructors, and research faculty from multiple disciplines to overcome several reported barriers to data science for life scientists, including instructor capacity, student prior knowledge, and relevance to discipline-specific problems. Preliminary survey results indicate that even a single module improves student self-reported interest and/or experience in bioinformatics and computer science. Thus, EDUCE provides a flexible and extensible active learning framework for integration of data science curriculum into undergraduate courses and programs across the life sciences.     

Online but not remote: Adapting field‐based ecology laboratories for online learning

Teaching ecology effectively and experientially has become more challenging for at least two reasons today. Most experiences of our students are urban, and we now face the near immediate and continuing need to deliver courses (either partially or wholly) online because of COVID‐19. Therefore, providing a learning experience that connects students to their environment within an ecological framework remains crucial and perhaps therapeutic to mental health. Here, we describe how prior to the pandemic we adapted our field‐based laboratories to include data collection, analysis, and interpretation, along with the development of a citizen‐science approach for online delivery. This design is simple to implement, does not require extensive work, and maintains the veracity of original learning outcomes. Collaboration online following field data collection in ecology courses within the context of cities offers further options to adapt to student experience levels, resource availability, and accessibility, as well as bringing instructors and students together to build an open well‐curated data set that can be used in ecology courses where no laboratories are available. Finally, it promotes an open collaboration among ecology instructors that can drive lasting conversations about ecology curriculum.     

Engaging students through online video homework assignments: A case study in a large‐enrollment ecology and evolution course

Online educational videos have the potential to enhance undergraduate biology learning, for example by showcasing contemporary scientific research and providing content coverage. Here, we describe the integration of nine videos into a large‐enrollment (n = 356) introductory evolution and ecology course via weekly homework assignments. We predicted that videos that feature research stories from contemporary scientists could reinforce topics introduced in lecture and provide students with novel insights into the nature of scientific research. Using qualitative analysis of open‐ended written feedback from the students on each video assigned throughout the term (n = 133–229 responses per video) and on end‐of‐quarter evaluations (n = 243), we identified common categories of student perspectives. All videos received more positive than negative comments and all videos received comments indicating that students found them intellectually and emotionally stimulating, accessible, and relevant to course content. Additionally, all videos also received comments indicating some students found them intellectually unstimulating, though these comments were generally far less numerous than positive comments. Students responded positively to videos that incorporated at least one of the following: documentary‐style filming, very clear links to course content (especially hands‐on activities completed by the students), relevance to recent world events, clarity on difficult topics, and/or charismatic narrators or species. We discuss opportunities and challenges for the use of online educational videos in teaching ecology and evolution, and we provide guidelines instructors can use to integrate them into their courses.     

Impact of problem-based learning in a large classroom setting: student perception and problem-solving skills

Problem-based learning (PBL) can be described as a learning environment where the problem drives the learning. This technique usually involves learning in small groups, which are supervised by tutors. It is becoming evident that PBL in a small-group setting has a robust positive effect on student learning and skills, including better problem-solving skills and an increase in overall motivation. However, very little research has been done on the educational benefits of PBL in a large classroom setting. Here, we describe a PBL approach (using tutorless groups) that was introduced as a supplement to standard didactic lectures in University of British Columbia Okanagan undergraduate biochemistry classes consisting of 45-85 students. PBL was chosen as an effective method to assist students in learning biochemical and physiological processes. By monitoring student attendance and using informal and formal surveys, we demonstrated that PBL has a significant positive impact on student motivation to attend and participate in the course work. Student responses indicated that PBL is superior to traditional lecture format with regard to the understanding of course content and retention of information. We also demonstrated that student problem-solving skills are significantly improved, but additional controlled studies are needed to determine how much PBL exercises contribute to this improvement. These preliminary data indicated several positive outcomes of using PBL in a large classroom setting, although further studies aimed at assessing student learning are needed to further justify implementation of this technique in courses delivered to large undergraduate classes.     

A comparative study between outcomes of an in‐person versus online introductory field course

The COVID‐19 pandemic has disrupted many standard approaches to STEM education. Particularly impacted were field courses, which rely on specific natural spaces often accessed through shared vehicles. As in‐person field courses have been found to be particularly impactful for undergraduate student success in the sciences, we aimed to compare and understand what factors may have been lost or gained during the conversion of an introductory field course to an online format. Using a mixed methods approach comparing data from online and in‐person field‐course offerings, we found that while community building was lost in the online format, online participants reported increased self‐efficacy in research and observation skills and connection to their local space. The online field course additionally provided positive mental health breaks for students who described the time outside as a much‐needed respite. We maintain that through intentional design, online field courses can provide participants with similar outcomes to in‐person field courses.     

Teaching an experiential field course via online participatory science projects: A COVID‐19 case study of a UC California Naturalist course

Experience and training in field work are critical components of undergraduate education in ecology, and many university courses incorporate field‐based or experiential components into the curriculum in order to provide students hands‐on experience. Due to the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic and the sudden shift to remote instruction in the spring of 2020, many instructors of such courses found themselves struggling to identify strategies for developing rigorous field activities that could be completed online, solo, and from a student''s backyard. This case study illustrates the process by which one field‐based course, a UC California Naturalist certification course offered at the University of California, Davis, transitioned to fully remote instruction. The transition relied on established, publicly available, online participatory science platforms (e.g., iNaturalist) to which the students contributed data and field observations remotely. Student feedback on the course and voluntary‐continued engagement with the participatory science platforms indicates that the student perspective of the experience was on par with previous traditional offerings of the course. This case study also includes topics and participatory science resources for consideration by faculty facing a similar transition from group field activities to remote, individual field‐based experiences.     

Persistent Controversy in Statistical Approaches in Wildlife Sciences: A Perspective of Students

ABSTRACT The controversy over the use of null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST) has persisted for decades, yet NHST remains the most widely used statistical approach in wildlife sciences and ecology. A disconnect exists between those opposing NHST and many wildlife scientists and ecologists who conduct and publish research. This disconnect causes confusion and frustration on the part of students. We, as students, offer our perspective on how this issue may be addressed. Our objective is to encourage academic institutions and advisors of undergraduate and graduate students to introduce students to various statistical approaches so we can make well-informed decisions on the appropriate use of statistical tools in wildlife and ecological research projects. We propose an academic course that introduces students to various statistical approaches (e.g., Bayesian, frequentist, Fisherian, information theory) to build a foundation for critical thinking in applying statistics. We encourage academic advisors to become familiar with the statistical approaches available to wildlife scientists and ecologists and thus decrease bias towards one approach. Null hypothesis statistical testing is likely to persist as the most common statistical analysis tool in wildlife science until academic institutions and student advisors change their approach and emphasize a wider range of statistical methods.     

Understanding ecological change across large spatial,temporal and taxonomic scales: integrating data and methods in light of theory

The difficulty of integrating multiple theories, data and methods has slowed progress towards making unified inferences of ecological change generalizable across large spatial, temporal and taxonomic scales. However, recent progress towards a theoretical synthesis now provides a guiding framework for organizing and integrating all primary data and methods for spatiotemporal assemblage‐level inference in ecology. In this paper, we describe how recent theoretical developments can provide an organizing paradigm for linking advances in data collection and methodological frameworks across disparate ecological sub‐disciplines and across large spatial and temporal scales. First, we summarize the set of fundamental processes that determine change in multispecies assemblages across spatial and temporal scales by reviewing recent theoretical syntheses of community ecology. Second, we review recent advances in data and methods across the main sub‐disciplines concerned with ecological inference across large spatial, temporal and taxonomic scales, and organize them based on the primary fundamental processes they include, rather than the spatiotemporal scale of their inferences. Finally, we highlight how iteratively focusing on only one fundamental process at a time, but combining all relevant spatiotemporal data and methods, may reduce the conceptual challenges to integration among ecological sub‐disciplines. Moreover, we discuss a number of avenues for decreasing the practical barriers to integration among data and methods. We aim to reconcile the recent convergence of decades of thinking in community ecology and macroecology theory with the rapid progress in spatiotemporal approaches for assemblage‐level inference, at a time where a robust understanding of spatiotemporal change in ecological assemblages is more crucial than ever to conserve biodiversity.     

Linking soil bacterial diversity to satellite-derived vegetation productivity: a case study in arid and semi-arid desert areas

Increasing studies have begun to focus on biodiversity–productivity relationships for soil microorganisms through molecular ecology methods. However, most of these studies involve controlled experiments, and whether the relationship remains at large spatial scales is still largely unknown. To unravel this issue, archived desert soils from long-term experiments were analysed using high-throughput sequencing, and satellite-derived vegetation datasets were acquired to quantify productivity. Most of the abundant genera were significantly different between low- and high-productivity conditions, and soil bacterial communities were strongly impacted by productivity. Soil bacterial biodiversity, including observed operational taxonomic units and the Chao1, Shannon, and Faith's PD indexes, increased rapidly with productivity at low levels and then reached a relatively stable state, and similar phenomena were observed at multiple taxonomic ranks and for most of the dominant groups. Furthermore, we discovered that the mechanisms resulting in the observed relationship might be ecosystem resource availability in large-scale regions and species competition in local regions. Collectively, these results enhance our understanding of the linkage between belowground microorganisms and aboveground vegetation in arid and semi-arid areas and confirm the potential value of satellite-derived datasets in research on soil microbial diversity at large spatial scales.     

Still More “Fancy” and “Myth” than “Fact” in Students’ Conceptions of Evolution

College students do not come to biological sciences classes, including biological anthropology, as “blank slates.” Rather, these students have complex and strongly held scientific misconceptions that often interfere with their ability to understand accurate explanations that are presented in class. Research indicates that a scientific misconception cannot be corrected by simply presenting accurate information; the misconception must be made explicit, and the student must decide for him or herself that it is inaccurate. The first step in helping to facilitate such conceptual change among college students is to understand the nature of the scientific misconceptions. We surveyed 547 undergraduate students at the University of Missouri-Columbia on their understanding of the nature and language of science, the mechanisms of evolution, and their support for both Lamarckian inheritance and teleological evolution. We found few significant sex differences among the respondents and identified some common themes in the students’ misconceptions. Our survey results show that student understanding of evolutionary processes is limited, even among students who accept the validity of biological evolution. We also found that confidence in one’s knowledge of science is not related to actual understanding. We advise instructors in biological anthropology courses to survey their students in order to identify the class-specific scientific misconceptions, and we urge faculty members to incorporate active learning strategies in their courses in order to facilitate conceptual change among the students.     

Backyard evolutionary biology: Investigating local flowers brings learning to life

Inquiry‐based learning allows students to actively engage in and appreciate the process of science. As college courses transition to online instruction in response to COVID‐19, incorporating inquiry‐based learning is all the more essential for student engagement. However, with the cancelation of in‐person laboratory courses, implementing inquiry can prove challenging for instructors. Here, I describe a case that exemplifies a strategy for inquiry‐based learning and can be adapted for use in various course modalities, from traditional face‐to‐face laboratory courses to asynchronous and synchronous online courses. I detail an assignment where students explore the developmental basis of morphological evolution. Flowers offer an excellent example to address this concept and are easy for students to access and describe. Students research local flowering plants, collect and dissect flower specimens to determine their whorl patterns, and generate hypotheses to explain the developmental genetic basis of the patterns identified. This task allows students to apply their scientific thinking skills, conduct guided exploration in nature, and connect their understanding of the developmental basis of evolutionary change to everyday life. Incorporating inquiry using readily available, tangible, tractable real‐world examples represents a pragmatic and effective model that can be applied in a variety of disciplines during and beyond COVID‐19.     

The challenges that spatial context present for synthesizing community ecology across scales

Accurately characterizing spatial patterns on landscapes is necessary to understand the processes that generate biodiversity, a problem that has applications in ecological theory, conservation planning, ecosystem restoration, and ecosystem management. However, the measurement of biodiversity patterns and the ecological and evolutionary processes that underlie those patterns is highly dependent on the study unit size, boundary placement, and number of observations. These issues, together known as the modifiable areal unit problem, are well known in geography. These factors limit the degree to which results from different metacommunity and macro‐ecological studies can be compared to draw new inferences, and yet these types of comparisons are widespread in community ecology. Using aquatic community datasets, we demonstrate that spatial context drives analytical results when landscapes are sub‐divided. Next, we present a framework for using resampling and neighborhood smoothing to standardize datasets to allow for inferential comparisons. We then provide examples for how addressing these issues enhances our ability to understand the processes shaping ecological communities at landscape scales and allows for informative meta‐analytical synthesis. We conclude by calling for greater recognition of issues derived from the modifiable areal unit problem in community ecology, discuss implications of the problem for interpreting the existing literature, and identify tools and approaches for future research.     

The effects of light pollution on migratory animal behavior

Light pollution is a global threat to biodiversity, especially migratory organisms, some of which traverse hemispheric scales. Research on light pollution has grown significantly over the past decades, but our review of migratory organisms demonstrates gaps in our understanding, particularly beyond migratory birds. Research across spatial scales reveals the multifaceted effects of artificial light on migratory species, ranging from local and regional to macroscale impacts. These threats extend beyond species that are active at night – broadening the scope of this threat. Emerging tools for measuring light pollution and its impacts, as well as ecological forecasting techniques, present new pathways for conservation, including transdisciplinary approaches.     

宏观生态学研究的特点与方法

宏观生态学是研究生态系统以上层次的生态学,研究对象为大尺度复杂系统,研究内容和方法都具有不同于传统生态学的明显特点。重视对空间异质性的研究,重视人类的生态作用,注意运用等级结构理论,其研究结果常常是非实验性和非稳定性的。遥感和地理信息系统是空间数据采集和管理、分析的主要手段,景观分析和景观模型是宏观生态研究的重要方法,定位观测试验的网络研究则是实现宏观整体研究的必由之路。     

Taking practical learning in STEM education home: Examples from do‐it‐yourself experiments in plant biology

Practical teaching can give authentic learning experiences and teach valuable skills for undergraduate students in the STEM disciplines. One of the main ways of giving students such experiences, laboratory teaching, is met with many challenges such as budget cuts, increased use of virtual learning, and currently the university lockdowns due to the COVID‐19 pandemic. We highlight how at‐home do‐it‐yourself (DIY) experiments can be a good way to include physical interaction with your study organism, system, or technique to give the students a practical, authentic learning experience. We hope that by outlining the benefits of a practical, at‐home, DIY experiment we can inspire more people to design these teaching activities in the current remote teaching situation and beyond. By contributing two examples in the field of plant biology we enrich the database on experiments to draw inspiration from for these teaching methods.     

Spatial autocorrelation of ecological phenomena

Ecological variables often fluctuate synchronously over wide geographical areas, a phenomenon known as spatial autocorrelation or spatial synchrony. Development of statistical approaches designed to test for spatial autocorrelation combined with the increasing accessibility of long-term, large-scale ecological datasets are now making it possible to document the patterns and understand the causes of spatial synchrony at scales that were previously intractable. These developments promise to foster significant future advances in understanding population regulation, metapopulation dynamics and other areas of population ecology.     

Using a course-long theme for inquiry-based laboratories in a comparative physiology course

I developed an inquiry-based laboratory model that uses a central theme throughout the semester to develop in undergraduate biology majors the skills required for conducting science while introducing them to modern and classical physiological techniques. The physiology laboratory uses a goal-oriented approach, with students working cooperatively in small groups to answer basic biological questions. The student teams work to develop skills associated with experimental design, data analysis, written and oral communication, science literacy, and critical thinking. The laboratory curriculum is a research-based model that offers the advantage of students asking open-ended questions by use of a variety of techniques. For the students and instructor alike, this presents an exciting and challenging approach for learning physiology and basic biological principles. Another advantage of this laboratory model is that it is flexible and adaptable; the central theme can be any that the instructor chooses, and the goals and techniques developed are based on student and instructor needs and interests. Students who have completed this model at Loyola College in Maryland have become equipped with the skills essential for any area of the biological sciences and, most importantly, showed elevated excitement and commitment to learning.     

Lessons learned through listening to biology students during a transition to online learning in the wake of the COVID‐19 pandemic

During the Spring Semester of 2020, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus (SARS‐CoV‐2) and the illnesses it caused (COVID‐19) led to widespread cancelling of on‐campus instruction at colleges and universities in the United States and other countries around the world. Response to the pandemic in university settings included a rapid and unexpected shift to online learning for faculty and students. The transition to teaching and learning online posed many challenges, and the experiences of students during this crisis may inform future planning for distance learning experiences during the ongoing pandemic and beyond. Herein, we discuss the experiences of first‐ and second‐year university students enrolled in a biology seminar course as their classes migrated to online environments. Drawing on reported student experiences and prior research and resources, we discuss the ways we will adjust our own teaching for future iterations of the course while offering recommendations for instructors tasked with teaching in online environments.