2016 Student Websites

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Monarch Butterfly Migration
- Matthew Dickenson and Manamaya Peterson

Tonic Immobility
- Alex Gumas and Carolyn Cole

Food Sharing in non-Kin
- Cam Roberts

Mobbing Behavior
- Nadav Mouallem and Edward Zhu

The Ethology of Reproductive Suppression
- Oskar Errikson and David Dunn

Green anole adventure
- Sean Burke, Ryan Kwok, Keita Yagi

Bug Report - Eusociality
- Krishna Anand

Manakin Mating Behaviors
- Erin Howell and Morgan Vague

Courtship and Mating Behaviors
- Leilani Ganser and Piper Rodolf

You Should Bee Dancing; Navigation Through Movement
- Nancy McWilliams and Sara Gross

Bowerbirds and Bowers
- Delenn Solis

Migratory Behavior in Pacific Salmonids
- Aurora Sola and Logan Tibbetts

Arctic Turn Migration
- Tiffany Thio and Indra Boving

Communication Destination
- Ry Dennis and Hannah Mirenta

Hybernation in Endotherms
- Maeve Kolk and Olivia Hagen

Avian Interspecies Brood Parasitism
- Jaque Trautman

The Call of the Pika
- Alicia Uchida and Moira Differding

 

Animal Behavior Websit Assignment

Student pairs will create a web site for an animal behavior of their choice. Students will comment on each other's draft website.

Website design can be a very effective means of communication. In science we use websites to advertise our own work, recruit students to our labs, convey the breadth of our research interests, discuss immature ideas, solicit collaborations, disseminate supplementary data, host databases that may be of use to other researchers in our field, organize our courses, advertise conferences, and generally communicate with scientists and the public around the world.

Students will work in pairs to design and create a website to summarize the current scientific understanding of a specific animal behavior. The summary must include information from multiple approaches that combine to describe the behavior overall. Students may use the four main areas of behavior as outlined by Tinbergen (1963), another scheme presented in the papers read during week 3, or their own scheme. Because some model organisms are more suited to specific types of research, it may be necessary to incorporate research from multiple organisms in order to discuss the all categories for the specific animal behavior. While books, websites, and newspapers may be used, the majority of the information and images that are presented should be derive from primary scientific literature and all sources must be cited (including images). When appropriate, students should include historical perspective. The completed websites will be hosted on the web with students' permission.

Evaluation:
Websites will be evaluated according to the "web critique" criteria. Students are expected to have a completed website by the draft due date. This draft will then be "polished" after receiving peer review. Both the draft, and the final product, as well as the critiques will be part of the total grade for this project.
Draft - 25%
Critiques - 10%
Final product 65%
See previous years' examples and templates at the "Teaching" page of my own website: http://academic.reed.edu/biology/professors/srenn/pages/Renn_Lab_pages/Renn_teaching_MAIN.html