Author: admin

Should young people feel remorse over climate change?

• Read the Suomen Luonto column (in Finnish).
• What thoughts and feelings does this text bring out in you? Write a response to the column.

Where can you find reliable information about environmental change?

• How can you judge the reliability of information? Search online with the search terms “biodiversity loss” and “climate change” and pick five articles. Try to assess the reliability of each article, and describe why you think they are reliable or unreliable. Was there a difference between the two search terms?
• Use the same search terms on e.g. YouTube or Twitter. Do these results seem more reliable or less reliable than the previous ones? Is it harder or easier to assess reliability?

Metapopulation game

This game simulates the workings of a metapopulation, i.e. a set of connected local populations living in a fragmented habitat. The game is inspired by the life of the Glanville fritillary butterfly, which lives in the dry meadows of Åland.

Equipment

You need a playfield where you can mark the patches: a gravel or dirt surface is best. On a grass field you can mark the patches with ropes, or simply stand closely around the patch controller. In this case you need to clearly mark the patch controller with the maximum number of butterflies that can be in their patch at one time.

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  Make a card for each butterfly, with 5-7 different colours showing the different genotypes and the shapes showing the sex of the butterfly. Make 10 of each colour, 5 males an 5 females. Each patch controller takes all the cards of a colour, and at the start of the game distributes them to the butterflies starting on their patch.
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  Each patch controller (5-7) and parasitoid wasp (1-3) will need a pencil.

Players and assistants

Ideally at least 20 people in total. 5-7 patch controllers, 1-3 predators and/or parasitoid wasps. The rest of the players are butterflies.

Setting up

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  Draw 5-7 patches on the playfield. The patches are of different sizes and at different distances from each other. Each patch is divided into sectors like a pizza, and the number of sectors is the maximum number of butterflies that can be on the patch at one time. This number is the carrying capacity of the patch. The carrying capacity of a large patch could be 8, and a small one 2. The whole game has more patch sectors than butterflies.
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  Make the initial division: the patch controllers go to their own patches and the butterflies settle each in their own sector in a patch of their own choosing. One patch is left entirely empty. The patch controller distributes the cards to the butterflies in their patch so that half the butterflies are males and half are females. The predators and parasitoid wasps can start anywhere as long as they don’t enter the patches. Now the game can begin – all the players start at the same time.

Course of the game

The game is played by male and female butterflies, and their goal is to maximise their lifetime reproduction, represented by the total of the points on their card. Each butterfly starts with an empty card, with the colour showing its genotype and the shape showing its sex. The game starts with full inbreeding, meaning that each patch only contains a single genotype. Each butterfly can only mate ten times, and crossbred matings are worth more points than inbred matings. However, to achieve a crossbred mating the butterfly has to move to another patch, which has its own risks.

When a male and female are on the same patch and both want to mate together, they are free to mate at any time. To mate, they show their cards to the patch controller, who marks both their cards with mating points: 2 points for crossbred mating (different coloured cards) and 1 point for inbred matings (same coloured cards). The same pair can only mate once, and then at least one of them must change patches before they can mate again. Butterflies that get caught by predators or use up all their ten matings die and move off the playfield. The game continues until all butterflies have either been killed or have mated ten times.

Dispersal and mortality

To achieve crossbreeding, or when a patch goes extinct, butterflies have to move between patches (disperse). This is done by simply running to a free sector in another patch. There are two kinds of danger between the patches: predators and parasitoid wasps. Both try to catch butterflies between patches but are not allowed to enter the patches. Predators kill the butterfly by touching it, which puts them out of the game. The touch of a parasitic wasp means that the wasp gets to cross out the butterfly’s most recent mating points, and one of that butterfly’s ten matings is thus lost. (In nature parasitic wasps lay their eggs in the eggs or larvae of butterflies and kill them.)

Local extinctions

The size of a patch affects the likelihood that it will go entirely extinct. At certain intervals (for instance as many minutes apart as there are sectors in the patch), the patch goes extinct. To show extinction, the patch controller raises their arm, tells all the butterflies to get out of the patch and holds their arm up for 30 seconds. For as long as the arm is raised, the patch is closed to butterflies.

Goal of the game

The winner of the game is the butterfly with the highest mating point total. Try out different strategies (staying put safely and getting low value inbred matings, versus going out for valuable crossbreeding with an increased risk of premature death). Between games you can think up new rules or adjust the sizes and locations of patches, and see how that affects the game. You can also try increasing or reducing predators and local extinctions.

Concepts being demonstrated

•  Fragmentation:  patches

• Inbreeding and crossbreeding: different coloured cards

• Carrying capacity: patch size

• Local extinction: patch size and extinction frequency

• Maximising lifetime reproductive output: strategies to maximise points gained over the maximum of ten matings

• Intraspecific competition: the fewer sectors there are relative to the number of butterflies, the harder it is to find a free sector

• Parasitic wasps: loss of mating points

How has your local landscape changed?

• Look in geographical information services to find information on landscape change around your school. Have forests been turned into fields or built over, has land been reclaimed from the sea, or have fields gone back to forest?
• In Finnish Environment Institute’s LAPIO service you can examine Corine land use change data. Type “muutokset” (change in Finnish) in the search box on the right hand side, and the search will suggest maps showing change over different time periods. Pick one whose name ends in “muutokset 1 ha”. If you are on the right zoom level, coloured areas will appear on map, showing where changes have happened over the period in questions. Look at the landscape around your school: what changes have happened in 2012-2018, 2006-2012 and 2000-2006

The Corine data only shows change over the past twenty years. Longer term change can be seen in old aerial photographs. For Helsinki, they are available  here. Aerial photographs from the rest of Finland can be found in  Finna  using the search terms ilmakuva and the place name. Aerial photographs can also purchased from the  National Land Survey of Finland (in Finnish).

Find a threatened habitat type near your school.

• The second part (in Finnish) of the threat assessment presents all the habitat types that have been assessed. Use the maps and captions to find a threatened habitat type near your school. What is its threat level? What factors threaten this habitat type?
• Visit and photograph the habitat you found. How does it differ from its surroundings? Are there observations on laji.fi that were made here? Are there threatened species among these observations?
• Is the location protected? Check on paikkatietoikkuna by turning on layers under the heading Protected sites.

Information about seminatural grasslands and wooded pastures (”perinnebiotooppi”) can also be found from ELY centers, which are conducting a national inventory (in Finnish). Those of Etelä-Savo can already be found online (in Finnish).

Why do we know so little about how species are doing?

Study the Red list assessments, and find out:

• Click on the rows that have high numbers of NA and NE species. These species have not even been evaluated. Can you find whole species groups where not a single species has been evaluated?
• Find out what the categories NA (Not Applicable) ja NE (Not Evaluated) actually mean. Why have these species not been evaluated?
• What does DD (Data Deficient) mean?
• Can you find a species group with no NA, NE or DD species?
• In the species list, scroll through the DD classified species. When you get to a species’ page, you will find a link to the laji.fi portal. How much information on these species is found there?

How many dung beetle species can you expect to find in an area the size of Finland?

In species communities all over the world we see a simple rule: the larger the surface area, the more species. The growth does not continue infinitely, but levels off according to this formula: S=CA^z Here S is the number of species, C is a constant, A is the surface area and z is a parameter whose value varies between 0.15 and 0.4. Find out the land surface areas of the whole world and Finland. If the whole world has 10 000 species of dung beetles, how many dung beetle species should there be in Finland? Let’s set the value of z at 0.3. The constant C is the number of species that is found in a surface area of 1. You can solve for C by putting the global number of dung beetle species and the world land surface area in the formula above. Remember to use the same unit of surface area in all your calculations (square kilometres recommended).

How many dung beetle species actually live in Finland?

• Now find out, how many dung beetle species have been found in Finland. Is it more or less than what you expected? If did the calculation above, compare the known number of species to the simplified prediction from theoretical ecology, and try to think of reasons for the discrepancy.
• How are Finnish dung beetle species doing? Threat level estimates are made regularly for Finnish species according to the instructions of the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Species are categorized according to their extinction risk level. The general criteria are population size and its reduction or fragmentation, as well as the size and continuity of the specie’s range. The most recent red list is found in https://punainenkirja.laji.fi (tip: type ”lantiainen”, ”sittiäinen” or ”sontiainen” in the search box). Find out how many dung beetle species are endangered in Finland, and try to find out why they are in trouble.

In this project

• Conduct your own experiment, where you apply the basic research concepts of experimental treatments and replicates.
• Use the scientific method to find out what role dung beetles play.

The original instructions of the dung beetle project are here. (In Finnish)

How fast do bacteria reproduce?

The speed at which bacteria reproduce is due to their ability to divide. One cell divides into two, which divide into four and so on. This is called exponential growth. Imagine that a single bacterial cell is transferred from your phone screen to your finger, and from there to your nose. The nose is a perfect environment. Now the cell divides every 20 minutes. How many bacteria are there in your nose 24 hours later? How long does it take to get to a million bacteria?

• Work it out with a calculator or test it out test it out here: Choose “Exponential” and click the right arrow to get to the exponential growth simulator. You can change the maximum allowed values by changing the settings behind the gear symbol.
• Why does this not actually end up happening in your nose? Tip: try the option “Logistic” in the same simulation page.
• Ruokatieto.fi has a good information package on food safety and microbiology (in Finnish). Why should you keep your food in the refrigerator? How would you examine the effect of cold storage on bacterial growth in the simulation above?

What kinds of observations are citizens contributing?

• Go to laji.fi using this link, to filter the millions of observations in the Natural History Museum database down to just citizen observations.
• Click the tab “Map”. You will see a grid covering Finland, which gives the number of observations for each grid cell. Find your school – are there a lot of observations in your grid cell?
• Above the map you see the numbers of observations and species collected by citizens for the whole of Finland. Note them down. On the right side of the screen, expand the menu called ”Place”. Click ”Draw coordinates” and draw a rectangle around your school to select the observations in just that area. How many observations and species are listed above the map now?
• Click on the tab ”List” to see the observations you just selected as a list. Scroll around the names of the observers in the Gatherer column. Do you see the same names repeatedly? Try picking a name and limiting your search to just this one person’s observations, using the menu “Observer”. At the top right you can click ”Set filters” to see which filters you currently have active and deactivate the ones you no longer want to use. When you have filtered your observations to a specific person, you can click the tab ”Statistics” to see a summary of that person’s observations. How many observations have they made? Have they made observations over several years? Do they only observe certain kinds of species, such as birds?
• Tip: if you want to dig deeper into your search results, you can download them by clicking the button “Download as a file”.
• When you are done studying your selection, go to the top right corner and remove ALL the filters. Now you are looking at not just citizen science observations, but also all the scientific collections that have been uploaded to laji.fi. How many observations are there now? You can see a full list of all the collections in the menu “Scientific collections” under Advanced.

Ask the scientist

• What did they think of the article?
• Were they able to deliver the message they were trying to deliver?
• What do they study?
• What made them become a scientist?

The scientific method in a Master’s thesis

• Find the steps of the scientific method in Mikko Tiusanen’s Master’s thesis.

Mikko studied the same ecosystem again in his PhD.

One of the articles in his PhD was cited especially often in other publications. Here is a list of articles that cited Mikko’s work.

• Look for key words related to the species and geographical areas that appear in these articles.
• What kind of research did Mikko’s results end up impacting?

The steps of the scientific method are

• Ask a question
• Find out what we already know about it by making observations and studying the literature
• Formulate a hypothesis, an educated guess
• Test your hypothesis: make a sampling plan that can confirm or refute your hypothesis
• Analyse your observations: for instance, calculate the averages of each group of observations, or draw a graph
• Draw your conclusions: was your hypothesis confirmed or rejected, or do your results not support either conclusions? What do your results mean?

Factors affecting biodiversity are often studied for instance by measuring biodiversity in different kinds of environments and seeing, if the conditions are correlated with the level of biodiversity. It is important to measure diversity in exactly the same way in each environment.

Which ecosystem services are most important?

Read about Finnish ecosystem services here

• What are provisioning, regulating and cultural services?
• Each ecosystem service is listed with its structure and function, as well as its benefit and value. What is meant by benefit and value, and what is the difference between them?
• Take a vote in the classroom on which are the most important ecosystem services to you. Are the winners provisioning, regulating or cultural services? Do you see a connection between biodiversity and these winning services?
• Try out some real decision making in Luke’s YODA tool (Test Project-YODA, right side of page). Change the importance placed on the various values and try to find the best outcome as you see it. Is biodiversity anywhere in the model? Do you think there is anything missing from the values available here?

Ecosystem services for breakfast

• What did you have for breakfast? Find out what ecosystem services were needed to produce it. List the various parts of your meal, and list what ecosystem services are connected to each part. Ecosystem services are listed here.

Bury the teabags in environments that are as different from each other as possible.

The spots should not be too shady, because the ground temperature affects decomposition a lot. Find spots e.g. on the edge of a forest, on the edge of a field, a park, the schoolyard and next to a city street.

At each spot you choose:

• Take Lipton Green tea and Rooibos tea bags.
• Weigh the bags (to an accuracy of 0.01 or 0.001 grams). Write down the weight of each bag.
• Find a good, non-shady spot.
• Bury the tea bags at a short distance from each other. The tea should be at about 8 cm depth, with the label sticking out above ground.
• Dig up the bags after 3 months.
• Dry the bags completely in a warm and/or sunny place.
• Gently par away any dirt on the bags. Open the teabag, take out just the tea, while being careful not to lose any.
• Weigh the tea (to an accuracy of 0.01 or 0.001 grams). Write down the weight of each batch.

Teatime4science is a project, where school children around the world all do the same experiment. You can also take part in this world-wide project and be a part of real research! They have more detailed instructions on their website..

Try this yourselves in groups of 3-8 people:

• Decide what you will count: plant species, bird species or different types of rubbish. Decide the limits of your small search area. With a little creativity you can do this in the classroom, for instance by counting different coloured pens in the students’ desks.
• Choose one person as the timer. They will need a watch, a pen and a piece of graph paper.
• Choose one person as the classifier, who will need pen and paper.
• The others begin searching the area. Stay within hearing distance of each other. The searchers shout out what they find to the classifier, who classifies the observations as they see fit and keeps a tally of the different species / rubbish types / colours.
• Every five minutes the timer asks the classifier how many species have been found so far, and records the answer.
• At the end, after for instance half an hour, draw the timer’s list as a graph like the ones in the article. Start by finding the largest, i.e. the final tally, round it up and set the top end of the vertical axis to that number. Draw the observations as dots on the graph, and connect the dots with a line.

Does your line curve? Does it curve enough for you to estimate, what the actual number of species in the area might be?

How did the classification go – did you disagree? Biologists sometimes disagree a great deal about how to classify individuals into different species.