SEE-UBlack Rock Forest

General Methadology for Instructors and TAs

Exercise 4: Turtle Trapping And Population Size Estimation
Module 4: Growth and Competition: Population and Metapopulation Dynamics

  1. Instructor gives the biological background during the lecture on population growth, population estimation methods, and why they are important for conservation biology
  2. Students will be asked at the end of the lecture to begin thinking of how to answer the question: “How would differences in the basic biology of the organisms affect the population estimates?”
  3. Independent and Dependent variables in the experiment: pond size and population size
  4. After lecture, before the start of field time, the students will be asked to confer with their labmates and will be required to convert the above mark-recapture concepts to Excel formulae (to be checked against those of the instructor)
  5. Possible field methodology
  6. Present the work as an oral or written report at the end of the second day