Much work remains to be done to understand and conserve the planet's biodiversity. Out of the estimated 3 - 30 million extant species, only about 1.4 million species have scientific names, with the majority of species, primarily tropical or marine ones, being unknown and undescribed by science. Even in temperate regions, because of the difficulty of collecting and identifying the rich diversity of small specimens, most of our knowledge from surveys and inventories concerns vertebrates and vascular plants. Invertebrates, fungi, and microbes are poorly known for most areas. Fortunately, as technology advances, it is now becoming feasible to consider conducting complete inventories of our natural heritage.
The concept of an All Taxa Biotic Inventory (ATBI) is to inventory and make information available on all species within a specified area, such as a park or wildlife preserve. The first ATBI was conceived and planned in Costa Rica for the estimated 235,000 species in Area de Conservacion de Guanacaste (ACG). It was a joint venture between the ACG and Costa Rica's Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio). Unfortunately, while much inventory work and biodiversity development continues in Costa Rica, this ATBI as a formal entity ended prematurely in November of 1996. Additional ATBI's are now under consideration by the U. S. National Park Service for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and other national parks. If undertaken, these ATBI's will provide considerable employment opportunities for young ecologists and systematists. The ATBI in Costa Rica, for example, had raised $20 million of the estimated $90 million needed to complete the project.
The goal of an ATBI is not simply to list the presence or absence of species within the defined area
but primarily to collect and disseminate useful information on the assemblage of species that live in
and move through the area. An ATBI would have many steps between data collection and the
dissemination of its final product -- information. Here is a partial list of what might be included:
For more information of the concept of an ATBI, please see the following links:
Trial Species Home Pages and
Insect Diversity Project
.
Rationale
We wish to teach
you modern inventorying techniques and have you learn local natural history. Hence, we suggest that you inventory
a section of your school yard or local park to provide supplemental information for the ATBI and as a training exercise for you.
Requirements
Because of time constraints, we propose to balance organizing and disseminating information with
field work at your local site. Each of you will be required to build three
pages on the WWW: one for a higher taxon (i. e., either a genus, tribe, subfamily, or family) and
one Web page for each of two species within your higher taxon.
The species you choose must exist both locally and in the Smokies.
After visiting your local site and consulting with your teacher, please choose a higher taxon and two species.
You will be
required to present evidence that each of your species occurs locally, and hence, we
recommend that you consider working with trees and plants and staying away from bears and
bobcats.
Some of the species that occur in the Smokies are listed in the Checklists under Flora & Fauna at this site.
You may choose your taxa so long as they are not the same as another student's. In addition, if you choose to work with species' for which a higher taxon page already exists, you may make pages for three species within that higher taxon, rather than two species pages and a new higher taxon page.
Choices will be approved on a first-come, first-served basis. If you want suggestions, please ask.
Computer Accounts
We have created a UNIX computer account for each of you. Through your account you have
access to e-mail, the WWW, and a place in which to create your Web pages. You can use the
computers in the BioScience Learning Center, those in Ecology's Teaching Facility, or other
machines with access to the Internet to work in your account. The UNIX machine's address is
dial.pick.uga.edu, and your e-mail address is your_account_name@dial.pick.uga.edu.
Grading -- Substance over appearance
Because you will use a new technology for which you have little or no experience, we will grade
this assignment primarily on the content of your Web pages and not on how slick they appear. In
short, go for content. However, we do not want just plain text. We want your pages to include
images, tables, and hypertext links between them and other sites. Additional guidelines and help
will be given on how to accomplish the technological aspects of what is required. For example, we
anticipate being able to help you scan a limited number of 35mm slide photographs for inclusion
into your pages. We encourage you to take photographs and obtain previously scanned images
from the Web to
include in you pages. We will grade the assignment based on the amount of effort that you do, on
your thoroughness and creativity, and on quality and content. The following page layouts are to
guide you. You may modify them if you feel that by so doing your pages will improve. As
possible examples of species-level Web pages, please see
Trial Species Home Pages
If yours are
anywhere near as good as these, you will get you full credit and 5 bonus points. So don't panic
when you see them.
Web Page Layout
Our goal is that each of you will contribute pages to our Web site that will disseminate information
on the species at Sams Farm. We propose to link information phylogenetically, with species Web
pages being linked to pages on genera, genera linked to tribes, tribes to subfamilies, etc. Hence,
we want you to create two types of pages with the following specifications:
Higher Taxon Page
Quercus nigra L. |
||
AREA | STATUS | REFERENCES |
North America: Continental United States; Canada | Yes | Duncan & Duncan, 1988 |
Eastern North America: United States east of Mississippi; Ontario and eastern Canada | Yes | Duncan & Duncan, 1988 |
Southeastern United States: AL AR DE DC FL GA KY MD NC SC TN VA WV | Yes | Duncan & Duncan, 1988 |
Southern Appalachian States: AL GA KY MD NC SC TN VA WV | Yes | Duncan & Duncan, 1988 |
Coastal Plain | Widespread | Radford, Ahles & Bell, 1968; Jones & Coile, 1988 |
Piedmont | Widespread | Radford, Ahles & Bell, 1968; Jones & Coile, 1988 |
Blue Ridge Mountains | Marginal | Radford, Ahles & Bell, 1968 |
| No | Radford, Ahles & Bell, 1968 |
Ridge and Valley | Yes | Jones & Coile, 1988 |
Cumberland Plateau | Yes | Jones & Coile, 1988 |
Central Arch | Yes | Albert J. Meier, Pers. Comm. |
Georgia | Yes | Jones & Coile, 1988 |
Clarke County, Georgia | Yes | UGA Herbarium Specimens |
Sams Farm | Common | John Pickering, Pers. Ob. |
| No adults | John Pickering, Pers. Ob. |
| ? | - |
| Common | John Pickering, Pers. Ob. |
| Common | John Pickering, Pers. Ob. |
For each place, be sure to cite your sources in the table. If you are personally recorded it, be sure to cite yourself with Pers. Obs (Personal Observation). Try to give some indication in your table as to the species abundance and spatial distribution, using such terms as widespread, local, common, rare, or absent. If there are no records or you lack information, hazard a guess: "No information, but possibly, probably, probably not,..." and cite yourself -- the now expert! For Sams Farm, give the evidence that you have that it does or does not occur there. For example, describe the logic behind your decision and cite any authority who may have helped you determine you material. If you include photographs of individuals from Sams Farm, be sure to state that the photographs are from material from Sams Farm in their captions.
Warning -- Do not break copyright laws or fail to cite sources. Bad things could happen to you. While you are encouraged to include information from books, journals, the WWW and elsewhere in your pages, do not break laws. Be sure to use quotation marks and cite text from all sources. Be sure that you have permission to put images on our Web server before you do so and cite your source for each image. All figures, maps and images are to include a citation to there original source in their caption. If you take a photograph or make a figure, then please include your name in the caption, e. g., [Photograph by John Pickering]. In short, get permission before you put other authors' information on the Web.
Duncan, W.H. & M. B. Duncan. 1988. Trees of the Southeastern United States. The University of Georgia Press. Athens, GA. (ISBN 0-8203-0954-0). 322 pages. Jones, S. B. & N. C. Coile. 1988. Distribution of the Vascular Flora of Georgia. Dept. of Bothany, University of Georgia. Athens, GA.
Safety -- Follow the guidelines given in the course syllabus. In particular, we recommend that (1) you go to the farm in groups rather than alone, (2) tell someone where you are going and when you should be back, (3) take a compass and head south toward Highway 78 if you get lost, (4) don't cross the stream under any circumstances if it is flooded, (5) be aware of deep holes in the wetland and know how to swim, (6) avoid poison ivy, especially the massive patch by the gate, (7) check yourselves for ticks immediate on returning home, and (8) take water so as to avoid heat stroke. Oh, and have fun.
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