Functional Diversity Outreach Activity
Luke Bassett
1/4/2015
In order to help teach the public on the importance of teleost diversity and inform them of the various diversity indices used to study biodiversity, I plan on creating an interactive activity for Activity Days at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and other local festivals. I plan to use laminated cards with common Chesapeake Bay teleosteans on the front side and details concerning their functional traits on the backside. My hope is that studying characters in actual fish will allow students to learn more about Chesapeake Bay inhabitants. Prior to the beginning of the activity I will give a brief explanation of the importance of functional traits and functional diversity. For younger students, I will relate these traits to the food web to help flesh out a background understanding on the topic. An individual or group will be given a set of cards and will then be asked to divide the cards into three to six groups based on appearance and/or functional traits listed. The amount of groups will be decided upon the older students themselves. For younger students, I will choose a specific number to make the activity easier. Likely, I will have younger individuals categorize fish purely by their appearance while older groups will use feeding, form and locomotion, size, and distribution characteristics as well. I may also have one group/individual categorize the fish purely based off the characteristics written on the back of the card while the other group/individual will categorize them based off individuals. I will then have the participants explain to me their reasoning behind their chosen grouping. After listening to them argue their explanations, I will explain the logic behind functional ecological groups and how they are determined as well as the fact they just created their own functional groups, albeit, in a simplified manner.
Target Audience
My target audience will range from late elementary school students and their families to high school students. Younger students will focus more heavily on categorizing the fish based by appearances rather than traits listed.
The Activity and Project are included in the link below. Tracked Changes, Markup, or Review may need to be turned off depending on your word processor.