SEARCH BETH CAMPBELL
GRADUATE STUDENTS
 
Regeneration in the Classroom: Linking Infaunal Injury and
Ocean Literacy Using Integrated Concept Mapping

Beth R. Campbell, Sara M. Lindsay, and Annette V. deCharon
Poster Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the
Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Seattle, WA
January 3, 2010 through January 7, 2010
Ecology of Marine Infaunal Injury & Regeneration
Concept map
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Background, Map & Poster

About Concept Mapping:
Concept maps are graphical tools that highlight fundamental concepts and the types of connections between concepts within complex systems. Educators can use concept maps to assess how students develop understanding. For example, students and educators can modify maps to reflect changes in the scope and depth of their understanding. The concept map on this page was created using the COSEE-OS Concept Map Builder. Content from this map will eventually be integrated into the COSEE-OS Ocean Climate Interactive.

About this Student:
Beth Campbell is a graduate student in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine. She has a B.S. degree in Marine Biology, also from the University of Maine, and taught classes at John Bapst Memorial High School prior to beginning her graduate work. Her thesis project with Dr. Sara Lindsay will focus on marine polychaetes.

Beth has participated in three COSEE-OS workshops: the 2006 Educators Institute (Seasons in the Sea: Understanding Change in the Gulf of Maine Through Buoys, Boats, and Satellites) at the University of New Hampshire and Teaching Science by Ocean Inquiry, held at the Darling Marine Center (DMC) in 2007, and the 2010 Graduate Student / Faculty Collaborative at the DMC. Beth's passion for both education and marine biology makes her a great collaborator for COSEE-OS as she pursues her degree.
Beth Campbell
 
Injury and regeneration are fascinating topics that students are eager to learn more about. This allure makes injury a great hook to introduce students to a broader set of biological and ecological concepts. We focus on marine infauna, such as polychaetes, because they are important "ecosystem engineers" that often lose tissue to predators or other disturbances. For example, they influence sediment chemistry, nutrient cycling, and microbial communities as they burrow, feed, defecate, and irrigate their tubes. Evidence suggests that injured infauna are less active while they regenerate and these reductions can have individual, habitat, and community consequences.

Concept maps are a useful educational tool to examine the costs and benefits of injury and regeneration, particularly linking the impacts from individuals and ecosystems. Such maps effectively show these linkages and encourage exploration of the processes that control and connect the immediate effects of injury on individual infauna with larger scale habitat and ecosystem changes. Our goal is to expand on the resources that are currently available to middle, high school, and post secondary educators using the COSEE-OS Concept Linked Integrated Media Builder (CLIMB) to create an interactive concept map of how injury affects marine benthic invertebrates, communities, and ecosystems. Here we present our initial concept map of how infaunal injury affects marine benthic ecosystems with examples of multimedia content, introduce the COSEE-OS concept mapping tool, suggest inquiry based activities for the classroom, and invite our colleagues to begin building their own concept maps of the integrative biology of injury and regeneration.
Applications:
Scientists, educators and students at all levels and stages of the learning process can use existing concept maps to guide inquiry.
A tool for graduate students ... Use a concept map to guide new graduate students to organize understanding of specific research topics prior to planning independent research.
Concept maps are useful for evaluating initial understanding and misconceptions about a topic. Educators can use this information to tailor instruction and guide student inquiry. Assignments could include developing and refining concept maps for a given topic within a course.
Free concept map builders, including the COSEE-OS Concept Map Builder, are available online. The COSEE-OS interface encourages collaboration - participants can easily share and modify concept maps they are building.
This concept map or others like it can help students investigate a variety of questions about regeneration:
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Why do some organisms regenerate, while others do not?
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What evolutionary patterns exist among organisms based on regeneration?
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What are the genetic and physiological differences in organisms that may lead to different responses to injury?
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What is the role of stem cells in response to injury?
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How can we effectively induce regeneration in currently non-regenerating tissue?
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How does the environment affect regeneration ability?
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Do injury and regeneration play the same role in all habitats?
References and Notes
Lindsay SM, Wethey DS, Woodin SA. 1996. Modeling interactions of browsing predation, infaunal activity, and recruitment in marine soft-sediment habitats. Am. Nat. 148: 684-699.
National Geographic Society (NGS). 2006. Ocean Literacy The Essential Principles of Ocean Sciences K-12 brochure. Available online. Accessed 1 December 2009.
Photos and figures by Sara Lindsay, except Clymenella tubes, by Paul Rawson.
Jennifer Page and Carrie Armbrecht provided helpful advice and technical support.
Research funded by NSF grant OCE 0825667 to S.M. Lindsay.
Attaching Images, Videos, News Items and Resources to Concept Maps
Concept map
The interactive version of this map, available online, contains more in-depth information (assets) visible when users click on map concepts. Examples of attached image assets associated with two pathways from this concept map are shown in the image at left (click image to enlarge).