ZOOLOGY 351 – FRESHWATER INVERTEBRATE DIVERSITY – 2008

Lecturer: Dr. Heather Proctor room: Earth Sciences Building 1-44                                 phone: 492-5704 email: hproctor@ualberta.ca contact times:    Tuesdays 9:30 – 10:50 (labs) Thursdays 9:30 – 10: 50 (lectures) or by appointment

Course coordinator:  
Ron Koss
phone: 492-1270

Teaching assistant:   
Rosey Radmanovich
room: TBA
phone: 492-1292
email: roseanna@ualberta.ca

Objectives:      Zoology 351 is a very practical course.  Your goals as a student are: (I) learn to collect, handle and identify Albertan freshwater invertebrates; (II) understand the biology and ecology of these invertebrates; (III) develop an appreciation of the diversity and fragility of aquatic ecosystems in Alberta.

Materials:

Roles and Responsibilities:   Zoology 351 is a relatively self-directed course.  Nevertheless, it is important to know what is expected from each of the participants.

(1) Lecturer (HP):    

- determines and presents lecture and quiz content
- together with Course Coordinator, sets Lab Exam
-supervises marking of quizzes, exams and collections
- present during scheduled Lab, Lecture and Field Trip times (except when there are unavoidable conflicts)
- available for meetings out of class time, by appointment

(2) Coordinator (Ron):

- dispenses equipment and materials for collections
- together with Lecturer, sets Lab Exam
- coordinates Field Trips, and may supervise trips if Lecturer and/or TA cannot attend
- ultimate arbiter of laboratory safety
- in charge of course web page

(3) TA (Rosey):             

- present during scheduled Lab and Field Trip times (except when there are unavoidable conflicts)
- available for student consultations, arranged by appointments, at all times during working hours
(9 – 5 Mon-Fri); however, the TA has limited number of hours he/she can allocate to such out-of-class consultations.
- marking of quizzes and lab exams
- together with Lecturer, marking of collections

IMPORTANT NOTE:  it is not the role of any of the above to identify your organisms!  If you ask “What is this?”, or “Could you tell me if I am correct in calling this a -------?”, we might point you in the right direction, but we aren’t obliged to tell you outright.

(4) Student:        

- present during scheduled Lecture and Lab times; strive your utmost to come on Field Trips, they are for your benefit
- curate and safeguard your collection.  “My collection was stolen” is not an acceptable excuse for failing to hand one in
- adhere to safety guidelines in Lab and on Field Trips
- do not cheat, plagiarize, or steal from others.  See attached excerpts from the Code of Student Behaviour
- missing the Laboratory Exam for whatever reason is not advised. If there are medical grounds, a deferred Laboratory Exam will be granted if the student obtains documentation from University Health Services OR Records Division, Examinations and Timetable (sworn affidavit) and this documentation is presented to the student's own faculty office within TWO working days of the missed exam. Please be aware that medical notes must be legible to the instructor, and that the period encompassed by the note must include the day of the exam. A deferred Laboratory Exam for Zool 351 will be set at most 10 days after the original exam time.

For a complete description of University regulations regarding exams, see the 2004/2005 calendar, section 23.5.6.

The University of Alberta is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity and honesty. Students are expected to be familiar with these standards regarding academic honesty and to uphold the policies of the University in this respect. Students are particularly urged to familiarize themselves with the provisions of the Code of Students Behavior (online at
www.ualberta.ca/secretariat/appeals.htm) and avoid any behavior which could potentially result in suspicions of cheating, plagiarism, misrepresentation of facts and/or participation in an offence. Academic dishonesty is a serious offence and can result in suspension or expulsion from the University.

ZOOL351  FRESHWATER INVERTEBRATE DIVERSITY  CLASS SCHEDULE 2008
Lectures: Thursdays 9:30 – 10:50 am in Botany 105; Scheduled Labs: Tuesdays 9:30 – 10:50 in Zoology 2-17/2-11; self-directed laboratory work in Z-217/Z-211 at any time from Monday to Saturday.  On Sundays and holidays the doors to Biol Sci building are locked.

**because they were not represented in quizzes, Chapters 37-42 and lectures 12 and 13 will receive particular emphasis in the exam

Components of the Course
Lectures and Scheduled Lab Time
We meet for lecture one day a week (Thursday).  Do you best to arrive on time.  This is particularly important for the quizzes, which start at the beginning of the lecture period.  There is also only one 1.5 hour scheduled lab per week that will be supervised by the TA and instructor (Tuesdays, 9:30- 11:00 am). Depending on popular demand, and scheduled on the basis of greatest convenience to as many students as possible, we will also come to the lab for another few hours per week. If you are struggling with a specimen outside of this time, feel free to come to our offices for help or ask one of us to meet you in the lab.  Of course, neither of us may be in; this is why it’s a good idea to save up several ‘hard ones’ and make an appointment.

Collection (40%)
At the end of the term you will hand in an identified collection with a list of taxa indicating the number of points you expect to receive (see the section: Final Preparation of Collection). More will be said about the collection as the term progresses.
Ideally, your collection should consist of specimens that you personally collected. Of course, if you collect with other people, the specimens can be divided the way you want, but two or more people cannot share a single specimen except in unusual circumstances.  If you engage in trading of specimens with other students, you must indicate the original collector of the specimen on the label.
Except under special circumstances agreed to by the instructor, only specimens collected in Alberta in the last two weeks of August of 2008 or later can be included in the collection. This rule is needed so that people who could not collect during the summer are not heavily penalized. 
Unlike some collection-oriented courses, there is no upper limit to the number of specimens handed in (except that you cannot collect more taxa than are actually present in Alberta!).  Working hard on your collection is probably the best way to do well in the final exam (see Appendix I). The range of points obtained by students varies among years (Appendix 2), determined mainly by fall water-levels and timing of freeze-up.  For example in 2004, the top collection was 2053, while in 2006 (a very wet fall with dangerously high river levels) it was only 1339.  Also, the points given for certain taxa can change, and in some years a ‘gift’ has been handed out to each student thereby inflating the average points. Because of such variation, you are marked relative to other members of the class in the current year.

Quizzes (20% total)
There are 5 quizzes at 4% each. They will be based on readings from Clifford (1991) and on the previous weeks’ lectures (see class schedule on p. 3). The quizzes take10-15 minutes, and are composed of 6-12 written questions that sometimes include drawings. You should prepare by reading the material indicated in the class schedule (e.g., for the lecture and quiz on 25 Sept, you should read Chapters 3-6 in Clifford and review Lectures 1-3).

Lecture/Laboratory Examination (40%)
The best way to get a good mark on the exam is to collect invertebrates and identify them throughout the term. Trying to learn how to identify everything in the last week or so is not a good strategy.  The final lecture/lab exam will consist of numerous stations. You will be given 1-2 minutes at each station and asked to identify invertebrates there based on the classification scheme used in class. You will also be asked to answer a short question on some aspect of the biology of the taxon in question that will be discussed in lecture. More will be said about the exam as the term progresses.  The quizzes that you will experience throughout semester will provide a good idea of the nature of the final exam questions.
Overall Grade
As Zoology 351 is a relatively small class, I will not assign final grades based solely on a curve.  As a rough guide, marks of 85% and higher are likely to receive A’s, 70-84% B’s, 55-69% C’s, below 55 D’s.  The exact cutoffs between letter grades will depend upon the final mark distribution for the class (i.e., where there are natural breaks in the distribution).

Textbook (including pdf version on CD)
Aquatic Invertebrates of Alberta is used for the quizzes and exam of course; but more importantly the keys in the book are used to identify the specimens.  If you decide to forego buying the hardcopy of the text, you should print out hardcopies of the keys and use them in the lab.  You could try using a laptop if you don’t want to print the keys, but there is always the danger of a spill of water or ethanol that will fry your motherboard.  We will provide you with additional keys for certain taxa throughout the course.
Please spend time browsing through the book to become familiar with its organization. If you find any error other than those already noted in Appendix 3.

Field Trips
In addition to collecting on your own (which you should do as often as you can), we have class field trips in September on three consecutive Saturdays. These are not compulsory but you should strive to attend as many as you can. You will have to sign a release form in order to attend.
More information will be given in class, for example, where to meet, the time, what to bring (see also the notes on Equipment & Safety).
The class field trips begin on Sept. 13, but you should begin collecting as soon as possible.  We realize that many students have no personal vehicles. This has seldom been a problem because people who do are usually willing to take others with them. Therefore, if you are going on a collecting trip and have space, please announce this to the class, e.g., a note on the blackboard, or tell the instructor and it will be announced in class.
A map showing the aquatic areas that can be sampled in the Edmonton area, by bus in some cases, is posted in the in the main lab (Z217). A good place to collect within walking distance of the Biological Sciences building is the North Saskatchewan River near the LRT bridge and Emily Murphy Park, and the pond at William Hawrelak Park.  But hurry, the pond is sometimes drained in early October.  Hermitage Park Ponds in NE Edmonton, and Big Lake, Sturgeon River, and various man-made ponds in Edmonton and St. Albert are also excellent nearby sampling sites. 

Do not transfer invertebrates or vertebrates (fish, amphibians) among water bodies.