Week 3, Chapter 2 -- Digging Deeper Course home | Weekly schedule | Announcements | Instructor Info | Desire2Learn | MasteringBiology® | Honor Code | FAQs | HELP!

Introduction:

Understanding the properties of water and how they influence life on earth is an important component of biology, especially today when humans are greatly impacting water resources. As you know from reading Chapter 2 in your textbook, water is one of the three requirements of life; thus, all organisms depend on water to some degree. Besides fish, many other organisms are aquatic and live either part of their lives or their entire lives in the water. For example, amphibians (“amphi” = double life) and some aquatic insects live part of their lives in water and part on land. Many insect larvae, such as dragonflies and mayflies, must live in water until they become adults. Have you ever seen a dragonfly larva or a caddis fly case in a stream? If not, click on the link to see pictures.

Instructions:

Part 1:

Pretend that you are an aquatic biologist conducting research on an aquatic organism. Choose one aquatic (or partially aquatic) organism to focus on – it can be an amphibian, fish, mammal, protist, aquatic insect, flatworm, aquatic plant, fungus, or bacterium. Your organism can live in any aquatic environment (stream, pond, lake, ocean, tide pool, coral reef, estuary, etc.). BUT, here's the catch. It must be native to the U.S., and it MUST be found in Oklahoma or surrounding states (KS, MO, AR, TX, NM, or CO).

With all of the problems associated with pollution, global warming, and over-use of water resources, you have become very concerned about the health of your organism, and aquatic ecosystems in general. You have been asked to do an interview with the local news on your organism, so here is your chance to make the public more excited about biology and aware of how altering aquatic habitats might affect the organisms living in them.

Write a mock news interview between yourself (the expert scientist) and a reporter that focuses on the following:

• Your organism: You want the public to care about your organism, so begin your interview by briefly describing its natural history (e.g. where it lives, how or what it eats, its life cycle, and anything else that makes it charming, interesting, and/or economically important).
• How a major property of water affects your organism: Choose at least one major property of water (e.g. pH, water as a solvent, dissolved solutes, polarity, cohesion/adhesion, salt concentration, heat capacity and freezing), and discuss how that property of water affects your organism.
• What might happen to your organism if that property of water were altered? Describe a situation that might alter that property of water (it can be human or naturally induced). Describe how that alteration might negatively or positively influence your organism.
• What can we do? Discuss what the public might be able to do to reduce the effects of this alteration (if your alteration is human-induced and if it negatively affects your organism).

Your interview should be about 450-500 words.

Remember, your interview is going to air on the local news, so you want to avoid using a lot of biology jargon. You want the public to learn about your organism and understand your concerns. So, be sure to explain concepts and processes very clearly.

This assignment requires you to do some research on your organism, the major properties of water that strongly influence it, and how altering those properties might affect your organism. You can find lots of information on the web, or you might even contact a real aquatic biologist to find out more about this topic (there are lots of scientists studying aquatic organisms right here at OU, and you can find them easily on the OU Department of Biology website). Be sure to correctly cite all references that you use in creating your interview.

Remember, however, that all parts of this interview MUST be in your own words. If you need a refresher on what is and is not a fair way to use other people's ideas, please consult Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It.

View a sample assignment.

Part 2:

Use D2L's spell checker (or the one on your word processor software, which will give you a word count as well). Proofread it yourself too, because spell checkers don't catch everything. When you are satisfied, post your completed assignment in the Digging Deeper forum for this week at the D2L discussion board.

Part 3:

Respond to the Digging Deeper posts of at least two other students. (If you are the first or second person to post, you will have to check back later to complete this part of the assignment).

• Just as you spell checked and proofread your original post, you should do the same for your responses.
• Please respond to posts with 0 responses first; once every post has at least one response, you are free to choose any post to respond to.
• When you respond, please use the name of the student you are responding to. That is, say "Hi Trudy" or "Hi Paul" so that you can get used to the names of the people in class. (You can find a list of "real" names and D2L names at D2L).
• In your response, feel free to address questions such as these: Can you think of any ways that water properties might affect the organism? Did the scientist make you more interested in his/her aquatic organism? Why or why not? At any rate, be sure you mention something specific that the writer did well. Also, specifically address anything you find that seems incorrect to you (phrased in a constructive way -- use the same language you would want someone else to use in telling you something you did wrong). You may wish to argue with (or critique) what the student wrote, request supporting evidence, evaluate the student's argument, add new information, make a factual correction, or explain why you agree. At a minimum this response should be at least 50 words and 50-100 is preferable. Check out this page for more on the topic of good and bad responses.

After you have posted your assignment AND responded to two other students, go to Desire2Learn and complete the Gradebook Declaration for this week's Digging Deeper assignment. (Your Gradebook Declaration is subject to the Honor Code.)

[assignment written by Raelynn Deaton]

Contemporary Issues in Biology -- BIOL 1003 Mariëlle H. Hoefnagels, Ph.D. © 2004-2015. biology1003 at OU dot edu (at = @, dot =.) Last Updated August 5, 2014 11:02 PM