Density at a distance

Next week's module in Grinnell's BIO 252 course (Organisms, Evolution, and Ecology) is about population ecology: in particular, density-independent and density-dependent population dynamics. You don't suppose there any, say, news items about those topics, do you?  Y'know. To show how they're relevant? Teachable-moments kind of thing?

Washington Post: simulations of density-dependent spread of a directly transmitted pathogen in human populations

The Guardian: severe outbreak of migratory desert locusts in Africa

Smithsonian Magazine: COVID-19 may threaten humans' closest relatives, just another spin of the extinction vortex for the great apes

How about some good news?  With a picture of a kitten, maybe?

The Scotsman: (wild) cat conservation

And here are some 2020 census data:

Seedling densities per 0.5-meter-squared in a Kern County population of Clarkia xantiana, Feb 2020. (Image by co-PI David Moeller, U. Minn. Twin Cities). Still counting after all these years.

Natural History at a Distance

The expanding geographic distribution of COVID-19 compelled Grinnell, like many US colleges and universities, to move to a model of distance learning for the remainder of the academic year. This was the right decision to make (also: way above my pay-grade), given the potential for such social distancing to flatten the curve, of infections. While acknowledging this greater good, it's hard not to feel anxious and deflated about the change in teaching mode, which upsets faculty, students, and staff who take pride in (and are accustomed to) teaching that is very much not at a distance. How do we do this distance-learning thing? Fortunately, there are people who know how to do this thing well. We can follow their lead. We can find some approaches that work. We'll manage.

One way I'm going to try to teaching at a distance is by using this low-readership blog as a tool, sending out seeds (of knowledge) like Apocynum, or setting minds ablaze like a prairie fire. We'll see how that goes, dude.