ENY 5006 Graduate Survey of Entomology

Description

By the end of this course, you should be able to pick up a common insect (a feat in itself for some people) and tell your friends what kind it is, how it moves, how it eats and digests its food, why it looks the way it does, where it usually lives, whether it is harmful to people or animals, how it’s controlled if it is a pest, and how it and other insects impact our lives. Pretty cool for an insect class. General Class Objectives:

1. Know characteristics of the major insect orders.
2. Understand the general external and internal anatomy and physiology of insects.
3. Realize the impacts of insects on man and the environment.

Prerequisites

LAB INFORMATION – The lab is a required as a co-requisite. The 1-credit-hour lab part of the course is offered for all ENY 3005 and 5006 students, and you must register for the lab separately. For those of you off campus, you will either attend a lab scheduled by your local UF/IFAS Research and Education Center or you will register for an online lab through the Entomology Department, available at (352) 273-3912. Both on-campus and distance students will have an E-Learning link for the lab. This is listed as ENY3005L/5006L in Sakai. The “L” indicates the lab section. The lab has a separate syllabus, so be sure to communicate with your lab TA and copy me if you have any questions. Students taking classes in Gainesville must take the on-campus lab. You must return any UF lab equipment to your lab TA when you turn in your collections.

Course Format

Location: Online

Topics

Description

Effective grant writing skills are essential to acquiring competitive funding from government agencies and private foundations. Writing a successful grant proposal is a blend of art and science. It requires basic know how, content knowledge, writing proficiency, strong research skills, creativity, organizational ability, patience and a great deal of luck. This course will provide students with the background necessary to develop a competitive funding proposal. Students will be expected to prepare a complete grant proposal (minimum 40-70 pages with forms) to an agency of their choice and have that proposal reviewed by professionals in their field. Lectures will focus on:

• Components of an application
• Helpful tools and resources
• Strategies for developing a proposal
• How to identify potential funding sources
• How to read and understand grant guidelines, requests for proposals/applications(RFP/RFA)
• Writing objectives
• Preparation and justification of budgets
• Protocols for use of animal and human subjects in research
• Cost-sharing and sub-contracts
• Procedures for grants submission and grants start-up
• The grant review process
• Writing cover letters
• Preparing a curriculum vitae
• The job interview process

Prerequisites

This class is designed for doctoral students who have started their research. Master’s students who are completing their research and have approval from their committee chair are welcome to register.

Course Format

Lectures and Discussion: 100% online https://lss.at.ufl.edu/
Location: The course will meet on Canvas

Course Goals

This course will provide an introduction to the basic skills, principles and techniques of successful grant writing. Students completing the course will:

• Understand the fundamental components of a grant proposal such as the abstract or summary, background and significance, specific aims/goals and objectives, project design and methods, sustainability, assessment, broader impacts, dissemination, budget, budget justification, and cover letter as well as the overall grant submission process.
• Learn how to locate available funding opportunities.
• Develop the skills needed to develop competitive grant proposals.
• Prepare a complete grant proposal to an agency of their choice. This includes a minimum 10-18 page narrative and a minimum 2-year $80,000 budget with multiple budget categories. Most full proposals will be 40-70 pages long with all of the required forms.

Topics

Description

Explore the processes controlling soil-water-plant-atmosphere interactions for agricultural systems.

Course Goals

Description

The goal of this course is to provide you with a sound theoretical and practical understanding of
insect diversity and the practice of classifying organisms. Lectures discuss the general principles
of systematics, history of insect classification, construction and use of identification tools,
nomenclature, and biology and evolutionary history of the hexapod orders. We also explore why
competing classifications exist in taxonomy, and what existing classifications imply about broad
patterns of evolutionary change and diversification within insects.

A collection is required that will refine your ability to identify insects to the level of order, family
and species. Accumulating the required numbers of taxa will be possible only by employing a
variety of collecting techniques and working with dichotomous keys. Building an insect
collection, with correctly identified and curated specimens is an excellent way to learn,
understand and employ the methods used by professionals to identify and classify not only
insects, but living organisms in general.

Prerequisites

ENY 5006 Graduate Survey of Entomology, or a similar course dealing with the classification of insects. Students are expected to be familiar with the insect orders before taking this class.

Course Format

Collect, collect, collect! Success in this course is largely linked to the effort you make to
collect insects in diverse environments early in the semester. Beyond the collection itself, keep
in mind that the more orders and families you have, the more specimens you have for studying
key morphological characters of these groups. Even if the weather is not perfect, you can find a
lot of diversity once you start looking. Don’t overlook urban environments and indoor habitats
such as homes and greenhouses, especially if it is cold outside! You will need to collect many
more insects than just the required number of Orders, Families and Species. This is because
many of your insects will belong to the same families, but you won’t know this until you have
already curated and identified them.

Plan ahead. Plan to collect intensively for the first third of the course, curating
specimens as you go and identifying insects in the groups that you are learning about in lecture.
After about 5 weeks, switch your primary focus to identification, and work on the specimens
that you have already collected and curated. This will allow you to become familiar with the
identification keys in the textbook using your specimens. As you become proficient at
recognizing common insect families, your collecting can become more targeted as you search
for groups not yet included in your collection.

Access a scope. The diagnostic features of many insects are very small and can be best
seen under magnification. It is assumed that you will have access to a dissecting microscope for
this course. If you are in Gainesville you can contact me to arrange access to a scope in
Entomology. Alternatively, contact a scientific laboratory or a high school science classroom to
request use of their equipment. A high‐quality hand lens (20X) can also be a great help in the
field.

Course Goals

After completing this course you should be able to:
1. Identify hexapods to order and the majority of common insects to family by sight
2. Identify adult insects to order and family using dichotomous keys
3. Collect insects and field data in different habitats using a variety of techniques.
4. Curate insect specimens properly, including labeling, pinning, point mounting, and
preserving in ethanol.
5. Describe the taxonomic process: how species are described, named and classified.
6. Explain how key innovations in the life history of insects led to their incredible diversity.
7. Interpret phylogenetic trees depicting the evolutionary relationships among insects

Topics