SUBJECT: Mark-recapture labs; use rodents?
DATE: 1/96
The Ecology instructor at our community college wonders if he should
stop the Mark and recapture Lab he does each spring. They usually
catch deer mice, flying squirrels, red squirrels, chipmunks, and meadow
voles, and the concern is for the viruses the critters could spread to
these students. One professor at the U. of MN only does this type of lab
with graduate students because of the threat. Any advice? Thanks.
We live in northern Minnesota, and the lab is in early April when
temperatures are 20 to 50 degrees F.
Sue Hutchins
From: shutchins@IT.CC.MN.US
Living in central Alberta, we too have had problems trying to come up with
a
good mark recapture lab that involved living critters and not beans! About
five years ago we tried a mark recapture doing fin-clips on fathead minnows.
We went to this as an indoor lab in large tanks but have also tried it in
confined areas of a small lake. It has been a very successful lab and we
stress to students that it is a valid field technique as well. We now run
this lab for 600 students a year and re-use the minnows from term to term
as
regeneration has occurred. It is a proven winner time and time again. I
can
send the protocol on to anyone that might be interested.
From: "Mag Haag" <mag.haag@UAlberta.CA>
Sue and other Biolabbers,
I've been using an indoor mark-recapture lab for the past 4 years or
so every winter using large trays of mealworms (all life stages).
The lab is very open-ended as students have to decide the methods of
sampling to use given the assumptions inherent to the techniques and
they have to decide whether to use one or multiple re-sampling
methods.
There are no correct or incorrect answers (I haven't
counted all the mealworm trays!) and the students have to evaluate
their methods based on the 95% confidence intervals they get.
For calculations, I use computer programs available with a text called
Ecological Methodology by Charles J. Krebs.
While this admittedly does not give students any
"field" experience, it does teach them to
work in a team to solve a real problem - and avoids the "canned lab"
approach. I'd be happy to send anyone more information if they're
interested.
Sue Opp
Dept Biological Sciences
California State Univ.
Hayward, CA 94542
sopp@csuhayward.edu
Hi, all:
Sue Hutchins wrote:
Judging from the comments I've picked up at the meetings of the American
Society of Mammalogists, the trick is to distinguish between the "real"
dangers and the perceived ones. If you know, for example, that your deer
mice carry hanta virus, stay away from them -- etc.
Of course, the instructor can always do mark-recapture using beans or other
in-lab substitutes
(I wonder if one could use some type of insect colony?). It might not be
as
much fun, but it's less risky and more reliable. Which, naturally, makes
it
less realistic :)
Cheers,
Kerry Kilburn
ODU Biological Sciences
Sorry, but I missed the first part of this thread, so if my remarks
are not relevant pretend I never sent this. Anyway, we also are
faced with winter problems and doing ecology, but a few years ago
we did a mark and recapture experiment with the "student body"
as the subjects.
Our own students randomly handed out candy to people entering the
building ("marking") and then selected a few classrooms (at the
end of class) to determine how many in the classroom had received the
candy ("recapture").... it got most of the points across and provided
a certain amount of levity. The registrar could tell us how many
students were in the building, but as it was an early morning period
that number was not very reliable...
Graham R. Kent (gkent@science.smith.edu)
Dept. of Biological Sciences
Smith College Northampton, MA 01063
While I have not yet tried it in a group, I've read a number of protocols
that use testor's paint to mark pillbugs. We figured that we could get
permission from the grounds staff to place enough bricks around the
building to have one or two for each lab section. It sounds fun but not
very practical in OH in January. What we did this semester was the classic
bean experiment. We also had a couple of ant farms (complete with red ants
-- no I KNOW why mom never let me have an ant farm when I was small!!) in
the lab. It gave the students a chance to see a live organism and to
decide how they would count a population in the wild. The students liked
it. --cmw
From: cwaggon@bgnet.bgsu.edu (Waggoner, Charlene)
If you want to use pillbugs in winter, try sampling in a greenhouse, or
collect a large number while they are still active and put them in a
terrarium with leaf litter and some carrots for food. By setting up
several aquaria for use by small groups, one could do a mark recapture
with the live pillbugs, which are always more fun than beans. I haven't
actually used this for recapture, but I have maintained the pillbugs for
other uses in this way and students had to hunt for the pillbugs in the
terrarium to use them in experiments.
Janice
***********************************
Janice M. Glime
Department of Biological Sciences
Michigan Technological University
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
jmglime@mtu.edu
906-487-2546
FAX 906-487-3167
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