BI 103F - General Biology-Wildflowers of Oregon

4 Credit(s)

Students investigate plant diversity, ecological and evolutionary processes, and conservation efforts with emphasis on learning flower characteristics for plant identification. Students practice describing habitats and identifying plants on local field trips to different ecosystems.

Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. Apply scientific inquiry to biological sciences.

2. Describe the steps involved in scientific inquiry and distinguish between a hypothesis and a theory.

3. Evaluate and critique scientific information from various sources (journals, magazines, newspapers, television, the internet) for scientific reliability and validity.

4. Examine a native habitat, describe the plant community and predict the interactions between organisms in that environment.

5. Explain the basis for conservation efforts to save native plants and their habitats and the value of natural restoration efforts.

6. Explain evolutionary processes and selection pressures that lead to flowering plant diversity.

7. Identify useful, edible, and poisonous plants and describe how these relate to human activities.

8. Discuss how the availability of our food (from plants) is related to the plant life cycle.

9. Correctly identify 45-60 different plant families, on sight from key diagnostic characteristics.

10. Describe and illustrate flower and leaf characteristics of an unknown species and apply the use of dichotomous keys for correct identification.

11. Relate patterns of plant population growth to ecosystem dynamics.

12. Evaluate selective advantages of various organismal interactions.