University of California Press

Table 3.

After the library session focused on literature searching and citations, students wrote a literature-based, cited, one-page paper on each of their two assigned species (see questions below), including scientific and common name, taxonomy, and information on the ecology of the species. Students were instructed to be specific. For example, the category “herbivore” is not particularly useful, because there are likely dentition and muscle differences among animals that eat grass versus seeds versus nuts.^*

1	Where is the species found across the planet?
2	Does it migrate? If so, when and where to and why?
3	Does it hibernate? What part of the year is it active?
4	How many babies does it typically have?
5	What is its typical life span?
6	What does it eat? Does it store food?
7	What eats it?
8	What microhabitat does it inhabit?
9	Are they social? Monogamous? Colonial? Solitary?

In addition to the paper, students submitted a spreadsheet with sentence fragments answering specific questions so that a cumulative comparison across all the species of interest could easily be made. For the spreadsheet headings, see Appendix 4.

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