Only after writing these reflections did I realise that five out of the six lesson I taught were either in the introductory Genetics Evolution and Ecology course or in one of the ‘Fundamentals’ courses for each of these topics that are taught in later years. BIOL 230 is the Fundamentals of Ecology course taught in second year.
I decided to teach a class on plant defense systems. This was an interesting class to take on, as it is not necessarily my area of expertise, but my research group has focused in the past on ecological plant biochemistry and so I had a lot of first-hand examples to draw from. This class felt a bit like a fact delivery class, which is not really my preferred way of teaching, but it was clear that this was a small part of a larger module in the course, and the purpose was to acquaint students with the variety of different ways that plants can defend themselves from herbivores and pathogens.
In general, I’ve felt that courses on evolutionary biology and ecology always benefit from a wealth of real-world examples. I’ve mentioned in the past that biology is a science of systems. Only by amassing many recurring examples of a phenomenon in nature can we support the theories by which the natural world appears to function. I brought up a number of topical and local examples of plant defense interactions in order to help the class better relate to the material, such as Mountain Pine Beetle or White Pine Weevil attacks on pine and spruce trees respectively here in British Columbia. I used a few iClicker questions to try to help the class understand some of the current hypotheses of how plants evolve specific defense mechanisms, and how there are resource trade-offs between survival and defense. I also included a section on the organism which I research, Western Redcedar, as there are a number of interesting ecological interactions in that system, as well as a good example of an evolutionary arms race, which may help explain why many organisms tend to evolve to specialise in preying on certain plant species.
I think the lesson went quite well, but it was a bit dry. I might have tried to improve it by including an activity of some sort, such as a worksheet, but there wasn’t quite enough time with the volume of information that needed to be passed on. Again, not my preferred method of teaching, but I don’t make the syllabus.