Title
The Only Good Mosquito Is a Dead Mosquito: Student-Led Scientific Investigations of Mosquito Predation
Location
Kansas State University-Manhattan Campus
Session Type
Workshop
Session Abstract
Most everyone loves to hate mosquitoes. The exercise begins by asking students to describe mosquitoes and what would happened if mosquitoes were eliminated. Then we do a hands-on demonstration of mosquito larvae being eaten by a dragonfly larva. Next, we have students design experiments to see how many mosquito larvae are consumed by other invertebrates (in this case dragonfly larvae and tadpole shrimp). Both of these predator groups readily eat mosquito larvae in a classroom setting and so students get to witness “the wild kingdom” first hand and then interpret their hypotheses. Then, we circle back to what good are mosquitoes… without them, lots of other organisms that we know and like would be food-limited. We have used this open-ended investigation with majors and non-majors and found it to be a great technique to improve science literacy while making it fun to observe mosquito larvae being eaten.
Creative Commons License
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Recommended Citation
Hoback, William Wyatt
(2017).
"The Only Good Mosquito Is a Dead Mosquito: Student-Led Scientific Investigations of Mosquito Predation,"
International Symposium for Innovative Teaching and Learning.
https://doi.org/10.4148/2573-4911.1008
The Only Good Mosquito Is a Dead Mosquito: Student-Led Scientific Investigations of Mosquito Predation
Kansas State University-Manhattan Campus
Most everyone loves to hate mosquitoes. The exercise begins by asking students to describe mosquitoes and what would happened if mosquitoes were eliminated. Then we do a hands-on demonstration of mosquito larvae being eaten by a dragonfly larva. Next, we have students design experiments to see how many mosquito larvae are consumed by other invertebrates (in this case dragonfly larvae and tadpole shrimp). Both of these predator groups readily eat mosquito larvae in a classroom setting and so students get to witness “the wild kingdom” first hand and then interpret their hypotheses. Then, we circle back to what good are mosquitoes… without them, lots of other organisms that we know and like would be food-limited. We have used this open-ended investigation with majors and non-majors and found it to be a great technique to improve science literacy while making it fun to observe mosquito larvae being eaten.
https://newprairiepress.org/isitl/2017/Workshops/2
