The red worm serves as an effective classroom model because its survival depends, as does ours, on the ability to respond to what happens in its environment. Using a simple animal model, the red worm, we have developed a module that successfully answers that need. Yet answering that question in a high school setting, using live animals, and applying that knowledge to modern-day issues of human and ecosystem health have proved challenging. The red worm serves as an effective classroom model because its survival depends, as does ours, on the ability to respond to what happens in its environment.Īndrewartha and Birch’s classic book The Distribution and Abundance of Animals (1954) asked, “How does the environment influence survival?” This approach has yielded a rich literature not only in ecology but in other scientific disciplines such as physiology and molecular biology. What cues do animals use to know where to live? How do they translate that information into behaviors that determine species distribution? Are the processes of sensing the environment and transferring that sensing into purposeful movement common to all animals, including humans? If so, can an animal as simple as a red worm be a model for our own sensorimotor pathways? Such fundamental questions of ecology and physiology are the framework for an inquiry-based experience in which students study live animals’ behavioral responses to their chemical and physical surroundings.
The activities are designed to generate critical thinking about neuromuscular processes and environmental pollutants that affect them. Students undertake a series of explorations to identify how red worms sense their environment and then apply that knowledge to understand the effects of chemical exposure on locomotor behavior.
In turn, the results of these experiments have direct application to human-caused environmental disruptions that cause changes in species distribution and indirectly increase the recognition that environmental chemicals affect human health. Using the red worm, a familiar live species that is amenable to classroom experimentation, students learn how environmental agents affect the animal’s locomotion by altering sensory neuron–muscle interactions and, as a result, influence its distribution in nature.
It is designed to incorporate environmental health and ecological concepts into the basic biology or environmental-science content of the high school curriculum. We have developed an experimental module that introduces high school students to guided scientific inquiry.
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