Re: paleonet Suggestions for intro paleo lab

[Phil Novack-Gottshall <pn2@xxxxxxxx>]

Greetings,

There have been some great ideas here and I think this is important for us 
to be discussing.

An idea I've been thinking about lately, but (I must admit upfront) have 
never tried, is to tie in the various taxonomy/anatomy labs in with a 
larger, semester-long phylogenetics class project.  The idea may probably 
be more amenable when using recent specimens where dissections are 
possible, but it could work with fossil specimens as well, and with 
important additional value (see below).  Although I must admit that I've 
always found working with living (or recently-dead) specimens an important 
aspect of understanding fossil taxa.

The idea would be to have each student pick (or be assigned) some important 
aspect of phenotype that they would be responsible for coding for all the 
primary phyla/classes throughout the semester.  For example, someone would 
focus on basic body-patterning (bilaterial, pentameral, limbs, skeletal 
chemistry, etc...), others on aspects of nervous system, digestion, 
respiration, etc...  At first you could present it as simply an exercise in 
gaining a comprehensive understanding of comparative biology.  Then, as the 
concepts of phylogenetics are presented, you could have them collaborate in 
entering their data into a character matrix that everyone would use at the 
end of the semester to produce a class-wide (and kingdom-wide) phylogeny of 
the Animalia.  If you were really motivated, you could also go to Genbank 
and pull out some rRNA molecular sequences or include HOX genes as 
characters to show the benefits of independent datasets.  Of course, their 
tree would probably differ in important aspects from the current consensus 
tree, but that's also an important part of understanding how science is 
conducted, and you could have them write up a final paper discussing how 
their homology-hypotheses either support the consensus tree or how 
additional research could help clarify their ideas.  And, perhaps as 
important, they could evaluate how the use of fossil taxa and stratigraphic 
ranges is an important aspect of phylogenetics that is lacking when only 
using living taxa.

Although it would take a good deal of effort, it helps teach the value of 
rigorous comparative description (as Bill Chaisson emphasized so well), 
while helping build bridges between the labs and between the often tedious 
methods of data collection and their eventual use in building important ideas.

Cheers,
Phil