EcoBeaker™

For over a decade, EcoBeaker™ has been the world’s leading program for teaching ecology using simulated experiments. Now used in hundreds of colleges and high schools, almost 100,000 students per year learn basic and advanced ecological concepts by designing and conducting their own virtual experiments and analyzing their own data. Flexible ordering options and well-written workbooks make EcoBeaker™ labs simple to adopt, and the well-crafted case studies and user interface make the learning experience enjoyable. Useful as either laboratory or homework activities, the EcoBeaker™ labs can also complement wet labs by providing a conceptual foundation.


EcoBeaker™ Labs

EcoBeaker™: Isle Royale
This popular laboratory explores basic population biology concepts including exponential and logistic growth and carrying capacity. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Keystone Predator
This laboratory recreates the famous experiments of Paine and colleagues in the Pacific Northwest with the sea star Pisaster (and 8 other marine intertidal species). ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Sewage
What will happen if your city starts dumping lots of extra sewage into your local lake? Will it become a slimy smelly mess? ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis
Using a model of succession from grasses to trees, students start out by observing a successional sequence without disturbance. Then they get to start setting fires. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Islands and Natural Selection
This laboratory explores how selection can act on two multi-locus traits as the selection regime changes. The example used is beak length and depth of Darwin's finches in wet and dry environments. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Niches and Competitive Exclusion
This fun and engaging laboratory, affectionately referred to as "the bunny lab", explores ecological niches and the competitive exclusion principle. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Corridors, Stepping Stones and Butterflies
Using a simulation of a population of Fender's blue butterfly, a threatened species that is endemic to western Oregon (USA) prairies, students try to figure out the best habitat restoration scheme giv ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Oil Spills
In this lab students work as advisors for a company that engineers bacterial strains that consume oil. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Limiting Nutrients
In this lab, students grow three different species of algae in isolation in a medium containing nitrogen, phosphorous, and iron. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Barnacles and Tides
This is a recreation of the classic experiments of Connell on why the barnacles Chthamalus and Balanus have distinct distributions in the rocky intertidal zone of Scotland. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Go Fish
As "virtual" commercial fisheries managers, students must decide on a strategy for fishing that maximizes their profits while minimizing extinction risk. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Aquatic Trophic Cascades
In this lab, students try the classic test of adding fish to a fish-free lake, observing the effect on the abundances of different sized zooplankton and phytoplankton. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: An Owl's Life
Students measure birth and death rates of spotted owls throughout a 3-stage life cycle. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Island Biogeography
This laboratory simulates a mainland with many species and an island whose size and distance from the mainland can be changed. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Prairie Sampling
This laboratory explores sampling strategies and dispersion patterns using a model of a prairie plant community. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Sick Fish
A new fish farm is being established and its managers want advice on preventing diseases. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Varieties of Competition
In this lab in students play the role of "ecological detectives" presented with several different communities of four mysterious species. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Mother Nature's Supermarket
The laboratory simulates gophers foraging in different spatial configurations of food sources, where they can't see the food and so must make decisions based on their recent foraging success. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Predator Avoidance in Aquatic Systems
The objective of this lab is to keep zooplankton survival high in the face of fish predation by manipulating several characteristics of the zooplankton, including their swimming speed, reproductive ra ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Mark and Recapture
Students try mark/recapture sampling on a population of pigeons in a park. ... Read more
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EcoBeaker™: Sampling Under Pressure
The model in this lab distributes a number of species around an unexplored area of forests. ... Read more
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"The labs worked great. It was one of the favorite parts of the class for many of my students. ...In my opinion, the EcoBeaker™ package was effective in illustrating the ecological concepts discussed in class. …thanks for an outstanding product. "

Dr. Thomas Chesnes
Florida Atlantic University

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