Biodiversity Renders Educators Speechless!
Recently a group of educators and students had a chance encounter with a frog in the Amazon. No bigger than a quarter, this tiny creature held the group captive, rendering everyone speechless as they admired its uncanny resemblance to a dead leaf.
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photo used with permission of photographer |
Excitement grew as the biologists conferred with the local guides. In hushed voices they whispered that it might be a species new to science. Minds reeled with the implications. It is still possible, in this era of satellite mapping and DNA sequencing, to stumble upon a new species by simply taking a slow walk down a rainforest trail.
The Amazon is home to a disproportionate amount of global biodiversity with new species being discovered at the rate of one every three days over the last decade. A single expedition into Suriname found as many as 46 new species. A survey of Bahuaja Sonene National Park in Peru found 365 species that had never been documented in the park - effectively elevating the region into the biodiversity hall of fame.
Does it really matter how many undiscovered species of beetles, frogs, or bromeliads live in the Amazon? Does it matter if we give them names and write papers on their natural history?
Yes, it does! The biodiversity of the Amazon sustains us all, giving us food, medicine, and potential solutions for our most pressing environmental problems. Just recently an Amazon fungi was discovered that actually digests plastic! In spite of the record rates of discovery, as a planet we are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis. We are losing species at rates 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate. With each loss of each unnamed and unknown species, we are losing the very keys to our future. |
Ask the Expert: Dr. Quentin Wheeler
An entomologist at heart, Dr. Wheeler has spent time in Peru studying pleasing fungus beetles - collecting a new species a day for over three weeks! His day job as a professor of natural history and the environment at Arizona State University keeps him busy, but his real passion is biodiversity. In 2007 he created the International Institute for Species Exploration with a mission to discover and describe earth's estimated 10 million or more species. Each year the institute issues a "Report Card" on the state of the world's species.
Every student who takes a biology class inevitably learns about classificaion and taxonomy. How do you answer the very basic question of "why does this matter to me?"
As we identify more and more species, we increase our understanding of how these organisms live and how they interact. This allows us to understand how ecosystems (like the Amazon) function and then we can make effective, fact-based conservation decisions. Another benefit of species exploration is what I like to call "evolutionary entrepreneurism." Organisms have solved environmental challenges for 3.8 billion years. As a result, living species reveal billions of potential solutions from which engineers, designers, biochemists, agriculturalists and inventors can solve problems in new, more effective, and sustainable ways.
What do you think is missing from the current global discussion on biodiversity?
Taxonomy has been out of fashion for decades, yet taxonomic information is more urgently and importantly needed than ever before. We talk about sustaining biodiversity, conserving species, and restoring ecosystems with knowledge of only a tiny fraction of the species concerned. The most fundamental and powerful thing we can do to understand and preserve biodiversity is to study it in detail. That means completing an inventory of our world's species.
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What Can You Do?
1. Take it to the classroom.
Use this engaging video introduction to Biodiversity created by the the hip young scientists of Wild Classroom to explain and explore biodiversity with students grades 5-12.
Challenge your 9-12th grade students to examine the economic and ecological implications of biodiversity loss with the Action BioScience lesson: Biodiversity - Why does it Matter to me?
Use Key to Nature Teacher's Handbook on Biodiversity to build your own background and find resources for your K-12 instruction on biodiversity, classification, and taxonomy!
2. Contribute to what we know about the Amazon. 
Join our  Project Noah Mission "Species Spotlight: Peruvian Amazon" and help us document the amazing biodiversity found in a 50 mile radius around the confluence of the Amazon and Napo rivers in the Loreto District of the Peruvian Amazon. Share photos of your Amazon wildlife spottings. Add descriptive habitat and behavior notes. Include GPS coordinates if possible! Help us build a virtual field guide to the biodiversity found in our little slice of the Amazon.
Future, Present and Past Amazon Workshop Participants! Contact Christa if you would like to be involved in creating classroom curriculum materials to support our Species Spotlight mission in the Amazon!
3. Use Project Noah for a BioBlitz in your school yard. Check out this video and see how this powerful tool has quickly become one of the most popular online communities for nature exploration and documentation!
4. Spread the Word! Forward this email to your colleagues, friends, teachers, professors, friends, and family.
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What Are Others Doing?
Young Achievers School explores the rainforest and creates a biodiversity field guide!
Kris Grymonpre (2011 Amazon alumni) teaches 7th grade in Boston and his students are mainly from low-income families. Each April they travel to the rainforest in Costa Rica with the help of a generous grant from the O2 for Life Rainforest Foundation
"Throughout the year, my students complete a research project about one of the creatures we hope to see on our trip; through this project we meet several of the state science standards on evolution. Just before we leave for Costa Rica, we unveil our field guide--a compilation of all the student research, complete with detailed drawings. Student take the field guides with them to the rain forest and learn about each other's animals, and when we encounter one of the animals, the student expert speaks up and teaches us about it! In addition to the educational value of this project, we have also used the field guides to help raise funds. This year, we have partnered with our school's computer teacher to plan a website and DVD of our students making Animal Planet-style video clips of their creatures in the rain forest!"
Calling all workshop Alumni!
We sure would like to know what YOU are doing!! Are you involved in rainforest studies in your community? at your school? with your students? with your family? Tell us about it so we can put a spotlight on your good work! Send an email to Christa or Frances and let us know what you are up to!
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