Forty-five minutes southeast of Boise, amidst a sea of sagebrush, a group of seventh-grade students stand transfixed around Boise State graduate student Zoe Tinkle. In one hand, Tinkle holds a squirming cloth bag and in the other, a stop watch.
Since 2013, Tinkle has been tagging and monitoring Idaho ground squirrels to study their population dynamics. Ground squirrels may seem more common than dirt in this expanse of desert but they’re a vital part of the ecosystem, as well as a major food source for predators like raptors.
The Idaho Army National Guard, as well as the Bureau of Land Management, both stewards of the land out here, want to make sure they’re managing their ground squirrel populations correctly.
As the bag wiggles, Tinkle explains to students her hypothesis on the personalities of ground squirrels, namely, that some are shy and others are more bold, which may affect things like how they forage for food. She’s trying to prove this hypothesis through the wiggle test. Tinkle puts trapped squirrels in a bag for one minute and times how long they spend wiggling. The wiggle test is an attempt to standardize and quantify the animals’ behavior, she explains. This particular bagged squirrel wiggles for four full seconds out of sixty.
“What does that tell us about him?” Zoe asks the students.
“He’s shy,” someone says.
“That’s right,” she replies. “A bolder squirrel would wiggle more — I’ve had squirrels that wiggle for the full minute.”
Students crowd in closer as Tinkle removes the squirrel from the bag. She talks of respecting the animals and treating them humanely as she checks its sex and combs its back for parasites. The students shriek and point when the young male squirrel is released back into its temporary cage: he has left behind a few fecal pellets — comedy gold for kids this age. Tinkle handles their youthful glee like a pro.
“Poop is a beautiful, awesome thing,” she tells them matter of factly. “From it, we can tell their level of stress, their diet, and what parasites they have.” A few students nod solemnly.
Roughly 175 seventh-grade Life Science students from Meridian’s Heritage Middle School watched Tinkle and others in the field May 13-14. What the seventh-graders didn’t know is that their teachers are students themselves — all were enrolled in Boise State biology professor Jen Forbey’s Science and Society class.
Forbey and other scientists know that the best way to increase recruitment in STEM fields is to create greater opportunities for teachers to provide student-led discovery in and out of the classroom.
“It’s also a great way for our students to share their passion and inspiration with the next generation,” Forbey said.
Forbey’s class used the IdahoWatch program to encourage teachers and classrooms to participate in local research, bringing the field to the classroom and the classroom to the field. IdahoWatch, which is a component of Boise State’s Service-Learning Program, is made possible with support from the Idaho Army National Guard, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and grants from the National Science Foundation. This year, Boise State was awarded the highest federal recognition a university can receive for its community service work.
Through IdahoWatch, Boise State students used their knowledge of scientific, conservation and social issues in local ecosystems to design engaging educational programs for middle and high school classrooms, including Micah Lauer’s seventh-grade Life Science classes, culminating in the two-day field trip to the desert with busloads of pre-teens.
With guidance from Forbey’s students, Lauer’s students prepared in the classroom by learning how vegetation structure and concealment is necessary to prey like ground squirrels, and how sound can effect animals’ behavior and communication. They learned about parasite ecology using bean bags and a glow-in-the-dark lotion. They also germinated sagebrush seeds to analyze how various environmental factors can affect the growth of these native plants.
The seventh-graders’ classroom learning was then put to the test in a series of stations set up in the desert. At one station, students studied how sagebrush density could affect how sound is transmitted. They also learned first hand how it provides vital cover from predators for sage grouse, pygmy rabbits, and of course, ground squirrels. At another station students took soil samples to study water retention back in their classroom. At yet another station, they used daubenmire frames to measure how much biodiversity could be found in 20- x 50-cm quadrats of desert. In the quadrats, students identified red moss, green moss, grass, burr buttercup, and juvenile sagebrush plants that ground squirrels use for cover.
Forbey then asked the seventh-graders to compare quadrats: “Which has greater biodiversity? And is that a good thing?”
“Sometimes,” one student replied.
“When would it not be a good thing?”
“When there are too many weeds,” he said.
“So when there are a lot of non-native species as opposed to native species. Why would we care about that?”
“Because animals might not have enough food?” Another student guessed.
“That’s one good reason.”
Lauer, who participated in IdahoWatch himself, said that this kind of hands-on learning teaches his young students that science isn’t just a subject, it’s a way of thinking about the environment in which we live.
“These kids will become citizens of the west, and we want them to be scientifically literate — to understand what the ecosystem is made of, value it and understand why it matters,” Lauer said. “They’re future stakeholders and future voters, even if they’re not all future scientists. Why not teach them about local science that they can see and experience, versus teaching lessons on rainforests thousands of miles away?”
BY: CIENNA MADRID PUBLISHED 12:38 PM / MAY 14, 2015