Fish Friday Details
You and your partner will lead a 20 minute presentation on the biology of a group of fish. You may use the blackboard, powerpoint, videos, preserved specimens or any other teaching aid that is available. You are welcome to bring in live fish if you can find a sample. Note that Sailfin Aquaria (located on Neil Street) have tons of different live fishes.
Here are some things that you should definitely cover:
Questions to possibly address
Which fishes are in your group? I have made the groups fairly large so that there are usually several different types to discuss. For example, the Osteoglossomorpha include the arawanas, elephant fish, and mooneyes.
In what habitats do they live? Is the habitat type fairly conserved (meaning that most of the species live in the same general habitat type) or is there a large diversity of habitat types? Is there anything interesting about their geographical distribution?
What is known about the general ecology of the group? What do they eat? Who eats them? Or does this vary across the group? How do they catch their prey?
Is the group monophyletic? If so, what traits are synapomorphies for the group?
What (if anything) is known about the speciation process in the group?
What is known about the breeding behavior of the animals? Are the breeding systems wildly variable or are they pretty conserved?
What are their primary sensory systems?
Are there species of concern for conservation? What is the problem and what can be done to mediate?
You may also go into detail into a couple of species if there are some that are particularly interesting.
Pre-Presentation Meetingu
Sometime in the week before your presentation, you should meet with me just to make sure that nothing critical is being left out of your presentation.
Review Questions
For each lecture, I make a series of review questions. You should make some for your lecture. Please note that only a fraction of these should be “straight memorization” questions. Better questions are the types that force us to use the information in some way. These are trickier to write (and to teach), but they make it much more likely for us to remember the details.