AUTHORS
Miranda Kearney1*, Lynne Beaty2*, and Shamili Ajgaonkar3*
1Biology Department, SUNY Oneonta, Oneonta, NY 13820
2Department of Biology, Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, Erie, PA 16563
3Department of Biology, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137
*All authors contributed equally to this work.
Corresponding author: Miranda Kearney (Miranda.Kearney@oneonta.edu)
THE ISSUE
Balancing the needs of wildlife and people has been - and continues to be - one of the more contentious topics at the public-science interface. This is especially true for game species whose population sizes are often augmented for recreational and economic reasons. This figure set focuses on the changing dynamics of forest ecosystems under increasing white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) populations and the challenges for wildlife management of this popular game species.
FOUR DIMENSIONAL ECOLOGY EDUCATION (4DEE) FRAMEWORK
- Core Ecological Concepts:
- Population dispersion
- Exponential and logistic growth - cycles
- Community
- Succession
- Stability - resistance - resilience - disturbance - steady-state - fluctuate
- Ecosystems
- Predation: predator-prey - herbivore - carnivores
- Regulators - control from below/above - trophic cascades
- Biosphere
- Global climate change
- Ecology Practices:
- Quantitative reasoning and computational thinking
- Data skills - inputting and data-mining / meta-analysis/ data visualization
- Modeling and simulation
- Working collaboratively
- Human-Environment Interactions:
- Human accelerated environmental change - there is no pristine ecosystem nor total equilibrium
- Anthropogenic impacts, intentional and unintentional
- How humans shape and manage resources/ecosystems/the environment
- Ecological stewardship
- Natural resource management
- Conservation Biology
- Ethics
- Environmental ethics
- Cross-cutting Themes:
- Systems
- Spatial & Temporal
- Scales
STUDENT-ACTIVE APPROACHES
- Figure Set 1: turn-to-your-neighbor
- Figure Set 2: visual analysis, informal group work, making predictions
- Figure Set 3: citizen's argument
STUDENT ASSESSMENTS
Minute Paper, Concept Map, Reflective Essay
CLASS TIME
One to two 50-minute lecture classes
COURSE CONTEXT
First and second-year courses in Introductory Ecology, Introductory Environmental Science, or Conservation Biology for majors. Some portions of the figure set can be used across all of the above categories, while others (e.g. modeling, figure 3) may be more appropriate for a majors audience.
DOWNLOADS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Data and figures used in this issue were adopted or adapted from original papers in the following journals: Conservation Biology, Ecological Applications, Forest Ecology and Management, Journal of Wildlife Management, and the Wildlife Society Bulletin. This figure set is based on the "Ecological Impacts of High Deer Densities" figure set originally submitted and published by Tania Schusler in Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology. Thank you to Christopher Beck and colleagues in the Teaching with Figures in Ecology Faculty Mentoring Network (FMN) funded by the National Science Foundation (DBI 2120678) for their thoughtful input on the revisions to this figure set. Thank you also to the Ecological Society of America for their support of the FMN that led to the production of this work.
CITATION
Miranda Kearney, Lynne Beaty, and Shamili Ajgaonkar. January 2024. Impacts of high deer density on forest ecology and considerations for developing effective management solutions. Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology, Vol. 20: Practice #1. https://tiee.esa.org/vol/v20/issues/figure_sets/kearney/abstract.html