Thank you National Geographic and the Waitt Foundation.

Here at WideWorldScience we are proud to announce that the field component of the lizard project is now being supported by a National Geographic Society Waitt Grant.  The generous support from this grant will allow Dr. Dan Warner, me, and our collaborator Alexis Harrison to step up our work in central Florida and reach an even wider audience of students through innovative educational outreach and partnerships with classrooms around the country.  This grant will allow us to:

1) Learn more about evolution by natural selection in the wild.

As the high school students who followed our work in real time last spring already know, we have an ambitious experiment currently underway.  We are attempting to answer the question of “What effect does the sex ratio of a population have on natural selection in that population?”  An animal’s sex (whether it is male or female) is one of its most significant traits that can determine its ability to survive in a particular setting.  For vertebrate animals (like our lizards) in the wild little is known about how the proportion of males to females affects the survival of both sexes.  What does it take to survive in a male dominated world? Is that different in a female dominated world?

To work to answer these questions, we are closely studying small populations on nine living laboratory islands.  Four of the islands have majority female populations and five of the islands have majority male populations.  Each of the founding lizards on these islands has been carefully measured and marked.  We also have taken DNA samples from the founding lizard population on each island and plan to track parentage in each successive generation. We will be looking closely at the sex ratios in each generation, survival rates for individuals and which sets of traits give an animal the best chance of survival in the available environments. In short, this work will give us the chance to answer interesting questions about evolution and sexual selection that have never been answered before.

2) Bring the experience of field work in evolutionary ecology into the classroom.   

At WideWorldScience, we believe that there is too much distance between the science students usually learn in school and cutting edge of research in the field.  With the field component of the Lizard Project, we are trying to bring exciting field work into the classroom.  Students and teachers from partner classrooms will follow our work through this blog as we prepare to go into the field.  This will allow for an inside look into the process of science.  Students will become familiar with our study questions, hypotheses and development of our methods.  Then as we head out to the islands to check on our lizards along Florida’s Intra Coastal Waterway, students will stay engaged through daily Skype chats from the field and frequent blog updates.  This will give students the chance to ask questions live and in real time as they get a window into the process of science as it happens.

If you are a teacher or a student who would like to be a part of the National Geographic supported Lizard Project this spring, please drop us a line at aaronmreedy@gmail.com 

Thanks again to the National Geographic Society and the Waitt Foundation for supporting science and our efforts to bring science to the classroom!

Thank you Oppenheimer Family Foundation! Kids will DO science.

We just found out that our proposal, Animal Behavior Symposium, has been funded by the Oppenheimer Family Foundation.  Each year the foundation gives out $250,000 in grant money to Chicago Public Schools teachers to support innovative hands-on project based learning.  If you are a CPS teacher or know a good one, please help spread the word about this funding opportunity by sharing the link below.
http://www.offtig.org/teachersarea/grantapplication/guidelines.php

The curiosity is undeniable when a kid holds an unfamiliar animal in hand for the first time.  In our Animal Behavior Symposium project, students will work with one of three species- Giant Madagascar Cockroaches, African Dwarf Frogs, or Green Anole Lizards- while they design their own unique research projects to experimentally investigate animal behavior.  They will carry out their experiments over five weeks and then communicate their findings with scientific papers which will be reviewed by their in class peers.  They will then orally present their papers to classmates and invited guests at a symposium.  They will then switch species, and building on the work of their classmates, carry out new projects that further the knowledge of the community.  This will help kids learn about how science works in the professional science community.  The best way to learn is by DOING.

New school year. New chance to push the limits of science education.

Last year The Lizard Project was a resounding success. We pushed the limits of science education. The partnership we had with Dr. Warner and Iowa State University could stand as a new model for science education in high school classrooms as well as a new model for education outreach for research scientists. We are currently working vary hard to publish our findings, that a female's nesting choices have significant effects on her offspring across multiple life stages, in a major scientific journal. Although the students involved with the project could already tell you what an impact it had on their learning, getting it published will be a nice way of telling the wider scientific and education communities what kids are capable of when you set the bar higher than it has ever been before. This type of science in a high school classroom would be nearly unheard of even in the most elite and wealthy high schools in the country. I am extremely proud that we achieved this at Kelly High School, where more than 90% of our students are designated as low income. So what are we up to this year? Well we have two major grants pending that could support some great projects this year. One would support an in class project that would give kids unprecedented creative freedom to design their own behavioral experiments with live animals. The other would allow us to bring even more field experiences to our students via live Skype chats from our island research sites along the Florida Atlantic coast. Oh, and we are still working on a documentary film about The Lizard Project. Check back for more updates soon.

OPPORTUNITY FOR MY FORMER STUDENTS

Were you inspired to learn by following Dr. Warner and me as we worked in Florida? Did you feel like the blog and the live Skype chats helped bring you closer to science in the wider world? If you said yes, You might have the chance to be in a commercial for Sprint where you talk about how technology helped you learn and inspired you!

If you are interested, email me at aaronmreedy@gmail as soon as possible and I will put you in touch with casting.

Learning by doing.

Salvador and the other high school students here at TREE have been busy designing and carrying out their own research projects in the field. In the picture above Sal is radio tracking western hognose snakes to study the home range of this little studied species. This is the kind of thing that really gets kids hooked on science and is hard to replicate in the classroom. Here is what he has to say about the experience:

The past three days here at TREE have been very interesting. I have met new people and made a couple of friends. TREE is a very cool program because I get to experience the science of biology, first hand. I don’t have to worry about anything here but just the projects that I am working on. There are three types of teams; the Trapping team, the Sand Prairie team, and the Predation type. Every team focuses on different side projects that revolve around Turtle camp. For my first year I have chosen, the Sand Prairie team. We focus on reptiles in the prairie such as Ornate Box Turtles, Hognose snakes, and the Six-lined Racerunners. My team members and I have developed an experiment to find out where Hognose snakes spend their time. To do this we are using a tracking device to follow them. The weather has not been the best but it has only been my third day. I can’t wait for what is in store for our team and what other animals we will get to see.

TREE- A science immersion program for high school students.

For the next 2 weeks I am fortunate enough to be a part of the Turtle Research Ecology and Education (TREE) program. I like to think of this as a science immersion program. For two weeks high school students camp on an island in the Mississippi River, and live and work along side professional scientists, grad students and undergrads as they study the nesting ecology of turtles. While at TREE students develop their own study questions and design studies of the local turtle,snake and lizard populations. They carry out their research and present their findings at a US Fish & Wildlife office nearby. This program works so well because kids live, eat and breath science 24 hours a day while they are here.

What have we been up to this year? Lizards (and an innovative way to teach kids to think and act like scientists)! A recap of The Lizard Project.

This year we tried to do something that is rarely done in high school science classrooms. We did science! With the help of the National Science Foundation and our friends Dr. Fred Janzen and Dr. Dan Warner at Iowa State University, we conducted research in ecology and evolution at the level of rigor practiced by professional scientists. Our research aimed to answer the basic questions of: "For animals that lay eggs, how do mothers choose nesting sites?" and "What effect does that choice have on the physical traits of her offspring?". We used 80 brown anole lizards in 20 different enclosures (although our project grew as babies hatched!) for our experiments and throughout the project we emphasized that our questions are questions to which no one (not even an expert evolutionary biologist) has the answers to for our study species. These are the kinds of questions which working scientists work to answer.

We used the entire experiment as the framework for learning the scientific method. Students identified a hypothesis and variables in the experiment. In our first experiment, we presented the female lizards (who were housed with males to ensure eggs) with choices in the types of locations available to lay their eggs. We presented the moms-to-be with five carefully measured levels of soil moisture, both with and without plants.

Then once a week, the students in my five classes carefully sifted through all of the soil to search for jelly bean sized eggs and record the choices that the females had made as well as the mass of each egg.

For our second experiment, each egg that was found was assigned to soil with a randomly chosen moisture content. The moisture content for the soils in the incubator were the same as the five moisture choices the females had in their cages. This allowed us to collect data on how the choices the mother made (and didn't make) could have affected her offspring. Once the lizards were hatched (they are about thumbnail sized and cute as can be) we measured their size and growth carefully to see if its incubation conditions had an effect on its physical attributes.

This was a powerful learning experience for me and my students. My students and I produced products at different levels to show our learning and communicate our findings. My sophomore biology students produced lab reports, my senior zoology students produced papers in the format of a peer reviewed scientific journal and I am currently working on a paper for publication in a peer reviewed journal.

We are looking forward to producing a movie for classroom use with footage from the the lizards' wild habitat and in the classroom to share our experiences and give teachers and students exciting material to teach and learn the scientific method and data analysis. Stay tuned for more!

Keep reading to learn about The Lizard Project in the field in the estuary ecosystems of central Florida.