Biology in the Age of Technology
Bio 632, Spring 2022
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Class focus
The focus of this class is to both learn about and discuss how various forms of technology are used in biology. For part of the class we had to create an ecospot to share an aspect of technology and how it connected to conservation and science.
Some of the main concepts I learned in this course connect to ways people are using technology in ways I might have considered unethical or impossible, for example climate engineering and cloning (O'Brien, 2015). And also, things I find amazing and so exciting, like using environmental DNA to track organisms, for example tracking jaguars using the environmental DNA they leave after drinking water (Wilcox, et al, 2021). This technology of eDNA has also been used to track invasive fish (Klymus et al, 2015) and even identifying species through DNA in the air (Clare et al, 2021). It is like a magical searching device.
Another focus of this course was on effectively communicating a scientific issue to the public and helping them understand it. We discussed how we might make connections to social media (Veríssimo, 2019) and how framing can help to more effectively communicate challenging scientific concepts (Kusmanoff et al, 2020; Schmidt, 2009). Finally, we read more about how we can incorporate traditional ecological knowledge into monitoring as well (Thompson, et al, 2020).
Connection to my Master Plan
I intend for my master plan to consider how people know they belong to place and to continue to explore place based ideas. For this ecospot, I wanted to explore how I might be able to help teachers to use both digital tools like iNaturalist and Seek, and low tech tools to increase observational skills like Nature Journaling to support themselves and their students to connect more to place. Large scale community science projects like iNaturalist can also contribute to monitoring of organisms over time and to look at changes in when animals are commonly found, especially as more people add their observations (Dickinson et al, 2021).
My ecospot contains links for how a teacher might incorporate the tech tools iNaturalist and Seek into their classroom by demonstrating how they might use them either on a virtual field trip or to prime their students before they go on an actual field trip. It also includes links to teacher resources and short videos from others as well as ideas from current teachers on how they have incorporated these apps into their classrooms.
Resources and Citations
Clare, E. L., Economou, C. K., Faulkes, C. G., Gilbert, J. D., Bennett, F., Drinkwater, R., & Littlefair, J. E. (2021). eDNAir: proof of concept that animal DNA can be collected from air sampling. PeerJ, 9, e11030.
Dickinson, J. L., Shirk, J., Bonter, D., Bonney, R., Crain, R. L., Martin, J., ... & Purcell, K. (2012). The current state of citizen science as a tool for ecological research and public engagement. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 10(6), 291-297.
Klymus, K. E., Richter, C. A., Chapman, D. C., & Paukert, C. (2015). Quantification of eDNA shedding rates from invasive bighead carp Hypophthalmichthys nobilis and silver carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix. Biological Conservation, 183, 77-84.
Kusmanoff, A. M., Fidler, F., Gordon, A., Garrard, G. E., & Bekessy, S. A. (2020). Five lessons to guide more effective biodiversity conservation message framing. Conservation Biology.
O’Brien, J. (2015). Technologies for Conserving Biodiversity in the Anthropocene. Issues in Science and Technology, 32(1), 17-21. https://issues.org/perspective-technologies-for-conserving-biodiversity-in-the-anthropocene/
Schmidt, C. W. (2009). Communication gap: the disconnect between what scientists say and what the public hears. Environmental Health Perspectives, 117(12): A548–A551 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2799486/
Thompson, K. L., Lantz, T., & Ban, N. (2020). A review of Indigenous knowledge and participation in environmental monitoring. Ecology and Society, 25(2): 10. https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol25/iss2/art10/
Veríssimo, D. (2019). The Past, Present, and Future of Using Social Marketing to Conserve Biodiversity. Social Marketing Quarterly, 25(1), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524500419825545
Wilcox, T. M., Caragiulo, A., Dysthe, J. C., Franklin, T. W., Mason, D. H., McKelvey, K. S., ... & Schwartz, M. K. (2021). Detection of Jaguar (Panthera onca) From Genetic Material in Drinking Water. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9, 289.