Online Research in Biology

What traits can be used to understand evolutionary relationships among organisms? In the investigation Sound Trees, students examine morphological behavioral traits of owls in order to make hypotheses about how they are related. By learning to access the Macaulay Library and interpret graphic representations of sound, they also prepare to do their own independent inquiries. View

What defines a species? And what are the conservation implications of the species definitions we choose? In the investigation Species Concepts in Birds, students examine sound and video recordings of pairs of species to look for evidence of possible hybridization or behavioral reproductive isolation. View

Are the distributions of breeding birds in New York state increasing, or decreasing? To what extent do these changes appear to result from human-caused changes in the habitat? Using data from two Breeding Bird Atlas projects conducted 20 years apart, students investigate Birds in Human Landscapes. This activity uses Google Earth and the New York State Breeding Bird Atlas database. Useful resources are also provided to create your own national or international adaptation of this lesson. View

Why are some bird species so elaborately plumaged? Why do the sexes look alike in some bird species but not others? In the investigation Ornamentation in Birds, students use the Birds of North America Online and the Macaulay Library to learn about the evolutionary forces driving sexual dimorphism. View

news: BirdScope Article Now Online

Submitted by colleen on 02-08-2011 10:49am EST

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If you're a member of the Cornell Lab, you already get BirdScope, featuring "news and views" from Sapsucker Woods. But if you haven't seen it, check out the article about the Online Research in Biology project from the Autumn 2010 BirdScope, now available online. Entitled "Science 101: Now with Real Data," it introduces the rationale for the project (How can instructors at any college keep up with the latest data and technology tools, and give their students experiences in the emerging field of ecoinformatics?), and describes some of the creative lessons developed by graduate students and postdocs in a Cornell teaching professional development more ...

news: Help Us Pilot Lessons

Submitted by colleen on 10-14-2010 9:49am EDT

The ORB project is looking for faculty or teaching assistants to help us pilot our investigations. In particular, we are hoping to find people willing to pilot Birds in Human Landscapes and Ornamentation in Birds. In exchange for piloting ORB lessons with your students, you'll receive personalized support in tailoring instructional materials such as PowerPoints and Student Sheets for your students and follow-up before and after the investigation to troubleshoot any questions or figure out strategies for assessing what your students learned. Please contact us, and thanks for all you do to help us create a community interested in inquiry-based teaching with ecological data!

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news: Article on Teaching Observation vs. Inference Through Online Photo-Tagging

Submitted by colleen on 09-14-2010 10:31am EDT

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Congratulations to our collaborators Margaret Voss of Penn State Erie, and Caren Cooper of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology! Their fabulous article "Using a Free Online Citizen-Science Project to Teach Observation and Quantification of Animal Behavior" is now in print in the American Biology Teacher. This investigation, suitable for high school or college students, makes clever use of the completely online photo-tagging effort called CamClickr. Students sort archived images of various nesting bird species on the basis of the number of eggs, adults, and nestlings present. They then annotate the photos with labels describing behaviors seen. Finally, they build up to testing hypotheses about nesting behavior using ethograms (descriptions of the behavioral repertoires of a species) that they have developed. Kudos to Margaret and Caren finding a high-tech solution to the logistical challenges of observing animal behavior in classroom settings. This lesson was featured at our 2009 Innovative Teaching in Ornithology workshop, as has been inspirational to our thinking about educational use of web-based citizen science resources. more ...

investigation: Birds in Human Landscapes

Submitted by colleen on 08-12-2010 9:34am EDT
Author(s): 
Yula Kapetanakos, Benjamin Zuckerberg
Breeding Bird Atlas
Summary: 

This investigation focuses on examining the impacts that humans may be having on a select group of bird species. The ultimate goal is to evaluate the connections between bird behavior, habitat needs, and factors involved in shifting population trends. more ...

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