In teaching laboratories for ecological courses, it is common to conduct sampling for macroinvertebrates to teach principles of community ecology. These investigations can be conducted in terrestrial or aquatic habitats and tailored to local ecosystems. Environmental gradients in habitat quality or levels of anthropogenic impacts can be sampled to utilize these species as indicators of ecosystem health. Continually sampling the same system over multiple semesters or years can provide a temporal data set that allows students to ask more complex ecological questions. Here we demonstrate the potential to collaborate across institutions to sample a population of aquatic communities and create a robust spatiotemporal dataset for use in instruction and research. This work is focused on a concentration of river rock pools along the fall zone of the James River in Richmond, VA and aims to develop a curriculum spanning concepts in community ecology and spatial analysis to serve courses ranging from high school environmental science to graduate student investigations. We present a model for facilitating data collection across multiple institutions and skill levels in a field research system that includes over 300 habitat patches.
Results/Conclusions
Our curriculum has been implemented with area high school students as a summer program and as an elective class during the academic year. Undergraduate laboratories have been designed for students at University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University in courses ranging from Introductory Ecology, Geography, and Ecological Techniques, as well as a graduate-level Advanced Community Ecology course. We developed a map of the study site accessible using the app Collector for ArcGIS so that instructors and students could identify sampling locations and enter data using their phones, as well as a sampling protocol that can be implemented with consistency across skill levels. Each teaching venue has emphasized different concepts using this system, including island biogeography, metapopulation connectivity, gradient analysis, disturbance ecology, and predator-prey interactions. Students have developed quantitative skills through learning metrics of species diversity and spatial analysis tools. This system highlights the potential of long-term and collaborative teaching laboratories in spatial community ecology and demonstrates how common curriculum can be scaffolded across institutions. Additionally, the data and associated teaching materials from our rock pools provide the opportunity for students to conduct investigations in classrooms without the ability to sample a similar system.