Curious if there are educators who have used iNaturalist in introductory evolution courses, specifically asking: what activities are recommended, how it has complemented the course curriculum, and what tips or feedback might be provided. I’ve used iNaturalist extensively with conservatio…

I taught an evolution course for 20 years before being introduced to iNaturalist, and I’m sure I’d use it if I were doing the course today. One starting point is with understanding variability within a species, the bedrock premise of natural selection. Take some widespread species and using “RG” o…

I’m not a formal educator, but @janetwright is thinking along the same lines as me (and I can testify to the variation inherent with many moths). I was going to suggest looking at international variance in a Moth genus like Mythimna. Mythimna unipuncta is the North American species of a genus that h…

Also not a formal educator and have no idea on what even an intro evolution course entails, but certainly you can use iNat as a means to compare differences both in terms of species and location for a particular genus? Since I personally have Lepidoptera in my mind, particular genera such as Vanessa…

You specifically mentioned the tree of life, but I suspect microevolution may be a more useful topic when using iNaturalist. Here’s an idea: explore patterns of phenotypic diversity in the Asian Lady Beetle, Harmonia axyridis. One could compare frequency of the traits geographically (high vs. low la…

Thanks all for the ideas so far. My original thoughts had been trying to figure out if there was a way to explore evolutionary trees through iNaturalist. I hadn’t been focused on phenotypic diversity (I think in part because I do some of this in an ecology course) but that also makes a lot of sense…

I believe everything that is usually shown on evolution course in forms of collected material can be gathered (photograped) by students, e.g. size/colour variability, pollination, individual variability. Other than moths you can use things like Colorado potato beetle which pattern on thorax is vari…

You might be able to use the taxonomic view by having students propose synapomorphies based on looking at a bunch of photos of some group and then assembling a candidate phylogenetic chart. Then compare what they got through examining morphology to the established view.

You can explore taxonomic hierarchies, but not trees. For exploring trees, there’s this: http://tolweb.org/tree/learn/learning.html

I’ve started using iNaturalist in my introductory ecology and evolution course. It is a large lecture course unfortunately without an associated lab class, so I use it to encourage students to simply go out and observe biodiversity. I have them take nature walks where they try to observe particular …

Using iNaturalist in an Evolution Course at the college level? Any experience or ideas?

Educators

hitchco July 25, 2020, 11:27am 11

Thanks for clarifying my ask and for the resource :)

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Using iNaturalist in an Evolution Course at the college level? Any experience or ideas?

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