RCN-UBE Incubator: NEWT: Network Exploring Wildlife Trade

University Of Rhode Island, Kingston RI

Investigators

Abstract

Humans have traded wildlife for millennia, but in the past 10 years legal and illegal wildlife trade has exhibited outsized growth, including in the United States, generating global revenues in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually with massive biological and social significance. Few colleges or universities offer opportunities for biology students to study the many facets of wildlife trade, which include direct impacts to wildlife populations, establishment of invasive species, and transmission of disease – including between animals and humans – and complementary disciplines, such as conservation law, cultural history, economics, and social sciences. This network will engage undergraduate biology students in pursuing authentic research questions in wildlife trade through new courses, learning modules, and resources, allowing students to build research skills while delving into a dynamic and timely topic. Investigating wildlife trade will yield useful information on a largely data-deficient topic and also introduce students to new career paths in biology and associated disciplines. The network will foster interactions between faculty and students at different universities, and across disciplines, thus encouraging collaboration and shared scientific discovery. Course-based undergraduate research experiences form the basis of this RCN-UBE network, with participating faculty from two-year and four-year institutions incorporating modules on wildlife trade into existing courses or creating new courses. Students will develop research questions and will collect and analyze data from pet shops, international trade databases, online pet forums, and news sites. Incorporating research in undergraduate biology education leads to increased competency in biological subjects, breadth of skills, and confidence in applying knowledge and skills to solve real-world problems. This network will eliminate traditional barriers to research, such as a requirement of a high grade point average or other scholastic attributes that may distinguish undergraduate students seeking research experience, setting enrollment in a course as the only requirement necessary for participating in research. Importantly, removing barriers to participation and the other benefits provided by this network will be important for students from under-represented groups, thereby fostering more inclusive classrooms and research environments. Students participating in the network will develop skills in science communication by sharing their results with public groups, thereby increasing community literacy in the issue of wildlife trade. Project insights, opportunities, and challenges encountered in initiating wildlife trade-based courses and course modules will serve as a foundation for the development of a full RCN-UBE proposal. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in "Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action" (http://visionandchange/finalreport) with additional support provided by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.