POWER POINT: DARWIN'S 'DANGEROUS IDEA'

Here's the Lecture Notes.

Here's a PDF file of the Lecture Guide based upon the notes.

The title, incidentally, is taken from the Daniel Dennett book which also inspired a two-hour episode of the NOVA 'Evolution' series. We will end up seeing much of this episode, broken up into chunks, over the next few weeks, so I thought I would provide a link to view the whole thing on-line, here.

EXTINCTION!

EXTINCTION

Monday's class will feature another excerpt from 'Extinction!', which is Episode 3 from NOVA's 'Evolution' series (2001).


The video begins with paleontologist Peter Ward hunting for Permian fossils in South Africa's Karoo Desert, and relates ecological pyramids (which are like a 'house of cards') to mass extinctions, which are believed to be rare but important events in the history of life. It then follows the work of American Museum of Natural History researcher Michael Novacek in building the fossil record of small, shrew-like mammals from the Mesozoic, representative of the lineage that will survive the next mass extinction (the K/T event), which will claim the dinosaurs. It concludes with an examination of the role of human activity in accelerating the rate of extinction, with important attention to conservationists like Alan Rabinowitz.


I encourage students to watch the video in its entirety. We simply do not have enough class time to do so ourselves, but I know many students will want to see the whole story, either by going to Google Video, or watching it embedded here:

EXTINCTION

MONDAY: ALAN RABINOWITZ

ALAN RABINOWITZ

Alan Rabinowitz is a director of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and is often referred to as the 'Indiana Jones' of wildlife conservation. He is featured on a video that I will be showing in part in class on Monday, and as I was researching the topic to present it to students, I learned quite a few things about Dr. Rabinowitz that I did not know. Students will be given an excerpt from this New York Times article, but Dr. Rabinowitz's interests are also surprisingly well-summarized in this interview from The Colbert Report.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Alan Rabinowitz
colbertnation.com
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Dr. Rabinowitz refers to the concept of the 'balance of nature' and also briefly addresses the question of whether or not extinction is normal. These dovetail very nicely with some of the Ecology standards that are all students are supposed to understand:

6) Stability in an ecosystem is a balance between competing effects. As a basis for understanding this concept:

a. Students know bio diversity is the sum total of different kinds of organisms and is affected by alterations of habitats.

b. Students know how to analyze changes in an ecosystem resulting from changes in climate, human activity, introduction of nonnative species, or changes in population size.

c. Students know a vital part of an ecosystem is the stability of its producers and decomposers.

e. Students know at each link in a food web some energy is stored in newly made structures but much energy is dissipated into the environment as heat. This dissipation may be represented in an energy pyramid.

ALAN RABINOWITZ
6) Stability in an ecosystem is a balance between competing effects. As a basis for understanding this concept:

POWER POINT: "DEEP" TIME!

The Power Point Lecture Notes on 'Deep Time' are available

The Power Point Lecture Notes on 'Deep Time' are available here.

A PDF of the Lecture Guide based upon those notes can be downloaded here.

The Power Point Lecture Notes on 'Deep Time' are available here.

ONE VOICE IN THE COSMIC FUGUE

TODAY
Today in class we watched a portion of an episode of Carl Sagan's television series Cosmos, "One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue". Produced in 1980, this program is still one of the most ambitious and sophisticated attempts at science education programming and I encourage interested students to watch the whole thing online, for free, at Hulu. I've also embedded a low-resolution version of the entire video below:

"LORD OF THE ANTS"

On Friday I showed my classes parts of a Nova documentary on one of my scientific heroes, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. This documentary was just released in DVD a few weeks ago after airing on PBS last year. There is a web site supporting this episode, available here.

Students who wish to see the entire documentary can view it online for free at Hulu.com, here. I've also embedded it, above.

Wilson's interests touch on some of the important themes we've been covering in this course the last few weeks, including the following important State Standards:

ECOLOGY (6) Stability in an ecosystem is a balance between competing effects. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:

a. biodiversity is the sum total of different kinds of organisms, and is affected by alterations of habitats.

b. how to analyze changes in an ecosystem resulting from changes in climate, human activity, introduction of non-native species, or changes in population size.

c. how fluctuations in population size in an ecosystem are determined by the relative rates of birth, immigration, emigration, and death.

e. a vital part of an ecosystem is the stability of its producers and decomposers.



I encourage my students to learn more about Wilson's work, and the work of other scientists who are working to preserve natural ecosystems.

POWER POINT: DIVERSITY AND CLASSIFICATION

The Power Point on "Diversity and Classification" can be uploaded here.

The Lecture Guide based on the Power Point can be found as a PDF file here.

POWER POINT: ECOSYSTEM DYNAMICS

This continues the material from Chapters 3-5 that was begun in 'Populations and Ecosystems".

You can download it here.

You can download a PDF of the Lecture Guide covering the last two Power Points here.