Category: Science Education

2015 Science Symposium

- Wendy St. John Leave a comment

(As published in the Fall, 2015, Science and Technology’s Newsletter”)

“This past May, the School of Science & Technology in partnership with the WATERS Collaborative hosted its third annual Science Symposium. As in past years, the event was kicked off with the 2014-15 Science 120 cohort presenting talks on the research project they conducted over the past year. This year many of the students also presented posters. We had a record number of 81 posters presented from departments across campus highlighting the work of 193 students.”

I was especially pleased to see this photo in the newsletter, as I worked with this cohort of Science 120 students, as a consultant to help them with field techniques related to their individual research projects. What a great group of students!

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Fun in Diversity Lab!

- Wendy St. John Leave a comment
So, probably the most exciting moment of my day (maybe of my life) was finding these little jellyfish in the tanks in Darwin 4. I didn’t actually find them, some of my students did, but I isolated them and managed to get some decent photos. At first, I assumed they were babies, but after poking around a bit, I think maybe they’re just a very small species. I’m thinking they’re in the genus Cladonema, but I can’t really identify them any closer than that. To me, they look a bit more like the introduced C. pacificum, but maybe they’re the native californicum? Or some other species entirely? They’re really small – maybe 2mm in diameter.
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Either way, we had a GREAT time in lab today – in addition to the jellies (and, of course, the Echinoderms), there were copepods and worms (probably polychaetes), and adorable tiny crabs (at least four species of crabs altogether between the two tanks, including the big crabs). Awesome.

Biology Lab: Sponges, Jellies, Flatworms & Molluscs

- Wendy St. John Leave a comment

We did a super cool lab this week – and a relatively photogenic one, at that – so I thought I’d post a few photos! We had a bunch of live specimens (mostly marine inverts from Bodega Bay), and we did our first dissection of the semester – a squid. SUPER COOL!

Here’s a planaria, a type of flatworm (phylum Platyhelminthes). SO CUTE!

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Fairfield Osborn Kelly Pond

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Field trip to the Fairfield Osborn Preserve, with A Watershed Year freshman experience class. I hiked up to Kelly Pond with a group of students so they could collect field data for a research project. It’s quite a hike up to the pond, which is near the northern end of the preserve. Covered with Azolla, the pond is a peaceful and lovely place to visit. 

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Who’s Awake? Me . . . too . . .

- Wendy St. John Leave a comment

I have a little great horned owl buddy who’s been calling most nights for the past few weeks close enough to my bedroom window that I can hear her* while I’m in bed. Usually, she calls really late at night/early morning (between 2 and 4 a.m.). But last night, I didn’t hear her at all, and it made me a little bit lonely.

But tonight, she’s out there calling already. At 6:30 p.m. Oh yeah.

I’m tempted to go out and try to find her, which I might be able to do by calling back to her. (I’ve never called down a great horned owl, but I’ve called down barred owls before, so probably it’s possible). BUT if she’s defining her territory or something like that, I don’t want to mess with her. So, maybe I’ll just sit her and enjoy the serenade. 🙂

I might at least take a peek in the trees out back when I go out for dinner (if I can convince my sonGr to rouse himself from the couch long enough to walk over to the Mexican restaurant up the street). 😀

*Guessing at the sex by the pitch of the call; I could be wrong about that, though. Also, the title of this post refers to the phrase many birders use to recognize the call of the great horned owl. It sounds a lot like, “Who’s awake? Me . . . too . . .”  (You can listen to it here; I like the “Territorial Hooting Duet” the best.

Best Joke Ever!

- Wendy St. John Leave a comment

Today’s diversity biology lab was AWESOME! I knew it would be fun – we looked at Echinoderms, which are just super cool, and we had a bunch of live starfish and sea urchins for them to examine under the scopes. So, that part was expectedly great – we fed the urchins bits of nori and watched them eat, and we looked at the starfishes’ tube feet, and some of the students took selfies with the critters. Very cool.

Then, when we were wrapping up to go back to the classroom (the tanks with the live creatures are in a different room), something totally amazing happened: one of the rock crabs decided to eat an urchin, while we were watching. I really didn’t expect this – the urchins and crabs have been living in that tank together for weeks now, and I hadn’t seen any sign of predation (well, not by the crabs; one of the starfish ate a chiton on Tuesday). I guess the rock crab was hungry. 😀

We watched while the crab grabbed the urchin and began to dismantle it with it’s two large claws. It literally cut the urchin apart, and scooped out its innards and stuffed them into its mouth. We could hear the endoskeleton crack, and there were guts floating around in the water. I’m honestly not even sure at what point the urchin stopped being alive – throughout all of this, its tube feet kept moving around, as though it were trying to escape. That part was a bit sad, but it was a good example of nature in action.

This was one of the most interesting thing I’ve seen on campus in all the years I’ve been at this school. It was really, really cool to watch, and my students were SO EXCITED!

That’s still not the end of the story, though . . .

You know how once in a while, there is a moment when you see a golden opportunity, and you take it? And it creates a rare moment of such great beauty, it’s like the sun coming out from behind the clouds on a rainy day? Today, I had one of those moments.

As we were watching the rock crab devour the urchin, someone asked about the other crab in the tank – a kelp crab – whether or not it might try and fight the rock crab for part of the urchin.

Using my best, most serious teacher voice, I said, “Do you know why the rock crab isn’t sharing its kill with the kelp crab?”

My students turned to me with expectant faces, waiting for me to drop some science knowledge on them. A few of them threw out guesses: “Because it’s a different species?” ~ “The rock crab is territorial?” ~ “Because the kelp crab doesn’t like to eat urchins?”

And I said:

“No. It’s because the rock crab is shellfish.“

*drops the mic*

AND THEY LAUGHED! THEY LAUGHED REALLY HARD! GENUINE LAUGHTER!

This was almost certainly the most sublime joke-telling moment in my whole life. Never again could that joke be so perfect, so appropriate, so hilarious. THEY LAUGHED and I did a victory dance, and it was so amazing.

So, yeah. Lab today was awesome.