Epic Bioscience

This upcoming, standards-aligned investigations is designed to engage your students in a unique phenomena that drives some ecosystem relationships and interactions - Mimicry. Students will explore the phenomenon first by using a game-based interactive to consider the kinds of physical cues predators use to make decisions on what to eat. Along the way, students are guided by input from a NHMU entomologist and science-based comics. Then, students will use museum collections to compare select specimens as they look for evidence that may reveal the physical cues that do drive prey choice. Working through real research and using the same science processes our own scientists use will help students understand how knowledge is generated and provide a foundation for transferring these ideas to other organisms and different ecosystems.

If you would like to help test the beta version of this investigation please contact mlarson@nhmu.utah.edu

This upcoming, standards-aligned investigations is designed to engage your students in evaluating the impacts of change in an ecosystem on resource availability critical to animals’ diets. To do this, students will examine how adaptable the diet of bats – critical to healthy ecosystems all over the world - are in responding to changes in their food sources – insects! Students will explore the phenomenon first by virtually dissecting bat stomach contents to learn what different species of bats eat. Then, led by a research scientists who studies bats, they will use museum collections to gather data designed to help them compare and analyze the diets of several bat species. Their research will help them figure out which bat populations are likely to survive, thrive or decline as a result of changes in insect populations.