Biodiversity education is a broad topic. This portion of BKS reflects my observations and topics I have been asked about. Most have to do with plants as seen from a taxonomic perspective because I am a taxonomic botanist. My goal is to encourage others, including other botanists, to think about what they want their students to learn and how best to help them do so and, if it seems appropriate, to modify how they teach their existing courses. Of course, how much can be accomplished in any given course depends on many different factors, including the amount of time assigned to the course, the facilities available, and the student’s background.
Plant taxonomy is about learning to share information about different kinds of plants with people around the world. But the world is a big place; introductory plant classes should emphasize the plant families students will see around them, placing them in a global context. It should also include learning about the origins of plant diversity, the interactions that help plant species stay distinct, how to identify a species they have not encountered before, how to make high quality preserved specimens, and why scientific names may change.
Origins of plant diversity in an evolutionary context.Identification tools, including use and preparation of dichotomous keys. These are important skills. The topic should be integrated into teaching about different plant families.
Field notesMaking high quality herbarium specimens.
Metadata are the data that describe other data.
The importance of metadata is comparable to that of accurate citations in scientific papers.
Failure to provide metadata may make data of little or no data.
Understanding why this is important.
Two biodiversity data fields for which metadata are too often omitted are:
Identification reference(s)
Geographic coordinates