Biodiversity


 * Assessment Items from the Biodiversity Small Group**


 * We identified three learning objectives to help students understand organismal phylogenies:**


 * 1) how to interpret phylogenies**
 * Summative 1: Which one of these topologies is different than the others? (provide differently drawn topologies as diagrams, rotating nodes, switching taxa)**
 * Summative 2: Looking at this tree, to whom is species X most closely related?**
 * Formative 1: Draw a topology from this parenthetical notation of a tree in groups, have groups compare their results.**
 * Formative 2: The Great Clade Race physical activity for tree construction.**


 * 2) the concept that phylogenies are hypotheses and can change depending on the data**
 * Summative 1A: What were the early notions of how Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes were related?**
 * Summative 1B: What happened to change our minds, the sorts of data that were collected**
 * Summative 1C: What does the tree look like now?**
 * Formative 1: Draw phylogenies (say of Plant, Animals, Fungi, Protists) based on different datasets through time.**


 * 3) the concept that phylogenies are useful tools in biology**
 * Summative 1A: Given this phylogeny with many clades and noted synapomorphies, which group is best bioprospected for X trait given limited time and money?**
 * Summative 1B: How do you prioritize the next stages of phylogenetic research (which should prompt the explanation that more data or more taxa need to be sampled).**
 * Formative 1: Create a phylogeny based on HIV sequences to understand forensic history of a crime.**
 * Formative 2: Have groups discuss real world case examples of phylogenies uses and present their findings to the class.**