FishShapes Undergraduate Research Experience
The lab runs the FishShapes Clemson Creative Inquiry undergrad research program, for details of the teaching and outreach activities of individual lab members follow the appropriate links on the PEOPLE page.
There are currently two options for getting involved in research in the lab as an undergrad. Option 1: join our team working to collect fish body shape data at Museum collections over the summer, this is a paid (@ $14 per hour) month long summer research experience in June or July, with training taking place each Spring semester (2024, 2025 and 2026). Applications will open in Fall 2024. Option 2: to work closely with a graduate student in the lab on research related to their dissertation. You can develop a variety of skills depending on the project, working with your mentor you set your own schedule and will have opportunities to present your research at local or maybe national conferences. Contact Dr. Price if you are interested in either of these options!
There are currently two options for getting involved in research in the lab as an undergrad. Option 1: join our team working to collect fish body shape data at Museum collections over the summer, this is a paid (@ $14 per hour) month long summer research experience in June or July, with training taking place each Spring semester (2024, 2025 and 2026). Applications will open in Fall 2024. Option 2: to work closely with a graduate student in the lab on research related to their dissertation. You can develop a variety of skills depending on the project, working with your mentor you set your own schedule and will have opportunities to present your research at local or maybe national conferences. Contact Dr. Price if you are interested in either of these options!
3-semester Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) 2016-2020
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As part of the broader impacts of NSF grant DEB-1556953 2016-2020 we developed a CURE . To learn more about this CURE read our paper in Integrative Organismal Biology, which describes it in detail. If you are interested in implementing a similar CURE with your students, please reach out as we are always happy to chat about our experiences. We coordinated five cohorts of undergraduate researchers (2016-2017, 2017-2018 UC Davis & 2018-2019, 2019-2020 Clemson) who take a series of 1-1.5 hour of classes that lead them through the process of science through practice over the course of 18-24 months.
First semester student activities
During the first semester the students gain the necessary practical skills essential for collecting data at museums and from photographs of museum specimens and begin to work on developing hypotheses. The students will work with fish specimens preserved in ethanol learning how to handle specimens, how to identify important anatomical features and how to accurately take morphometric measurements using dial and electric calipers. They will also learn about and develop a proficiency with the computational technique known as geometric morphometrics, which is used to estimate body shape from photographs through the placement of landmarks on key shared anatomical features. Through short lectures, active-learning exercises, as well as reading scientific papers and books they will also gain familiarity with fish biodiversity, biology and ecology so that they can start to develop hypothesizes that they want to test with the fish body shape data. This will include tips and techniques for reading scientific papers and understanding them including all the graphs and figures as well as exercises to learn how to effectively run bibliographic searches, develop hypotheses and to generate a check-list for evaluating scientific hypotheses. Students will work together as a group with directed discussions that focus on generating, evaluating and refining ideas until a hypothesis with the potential to lead to a real scientific publication has been generated.
Second semester student activities
The first goal for the second semester is for the students to finalize a hypothesis that they want to test with the fish body shape data, along with any additional data that needs to be collected to test the hypothesis (e.g. ecology, life history or habitat data). The second goal is for the students to begin to develop skills that will help them with analyzing their data. There will be short lectures on statistics but primarily they will undertake tasks that will introduce them to R, they will learn how to read tables of data into R, how to manipulate those tables and generate basic graphs and visualizations. R is an incredibly useful open source programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics and learning to use it will involve learning basic computer science and programming concepts.
Third semester student activities
The primary goal for the third semester is generating and presenting results. Students will continue to learn R through practical exercises in order to develop skills specific to this project including how to read phylogenies in to R, how to manipulate them, how to visualize traits on phylogenies as well as how to run statistical analyses that include the phylogeny. They then will use these skills to analyze their data and test the hypothesis generated in semester 2. Students will work together through directed discussions to critically evaluate the results and identify any further analyses that are needed to support the findings. Once the results have been generated the students will work on presenting the findings in the form of scientific posters, talks and ultimately as a scientific paper to be submitted for publication. All students will be encouraged to present their findings outside of class at the Focus on CI event or Clemson Biological Sciences Annual Student Symposium (CBASS). Students will work on drafting each section of the paper with help and advice. Students will also participated some professional development activities focused on learning about graduate school, what is involved and how to apply.
Student learning goals
First semester student activities
During the first semester the students gain the necessary practical skills essential for collecting data at museums and from photographs of museum specimens and begin to work on developing hypotheses. The students will work with fish specimens preserved in ethanol learning how to handle specimens, how to identify important anatomical features and how to accurately take morphometric measurements using dial and electric calipers. They will also learn about and develop a proficiency with the computational technique known as geometric morphometrics, which is used to estimate body shape from photographs through the placement of landmarks on key shared anatomical features. Through short lectures, active-learning exercises, as well as reading scientific papers and books they will also gain familiarity with fish biodiversity, biology and ecology so that they can start to develop hypothesizes that they want to test with the fish body shape data. This will include tips and techniques for reading scientific papers and understanding them including all the graphs and figures as well as exercises to learn how to effectively run bibliographic searches, develop hypotheses and to generate a check-list for evaluating scientific hypotheses. Students will work together as a group with directed discussions that focus on generating, evaluating and refining ideas until a hypothesis with the potential to lead to a real scientific publication has been generated.
Second semester student activities
The first goal for the second semester is for the students to finalize a hypothesis that they want to test with the fish body shape data, along with any additional data that needs to be collected to test the hypothesis (e.g. ecology, life history or habitat data). The second goal is for the students to begin to develop skills that will help them with analyzing their data. There will be short lectures on statistics but primarily they will undertake tasks that will introduce them to R, they will learn how to read tables of data into R, how to manipulate those tables and generate basic graphs and visualizations. R is an incredibly useful open source programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics and learning to use it will involve learning basic computer science and programming concepts.
Third semester student activities
The primary goal for the third semester is generating and presenting results. Students will continue to learn R through practical exercises in order to develop skills specific to this project including how to read phylogenies in to R, how to manipulate them, how to visualize traits on phylogenies as well as how to run statistical analyses that include the phylogeny. They then will use these skills to analyze their data and test the hypothesis generated in semester 2. Students will work together through directed discussions to critically evaluate the results and identify any further analyses that are needed to support the findings. Once the results have been generated the students will work on presenting the findings in the form of scientific posters, talks and ultimately as a scientific paper to be submitted for publication. All students will be encouraged to present their findings outside of class at the Focus on CI event or Clemson Biological Sciences Annual Student Symposium (CBASS). Students will work on drafting each section of the paper with help and advice. Students will also participated some professional development activities focused on learning about graduate school, what is involved and how to apply.
Student learning goals
- Students will be able to identify basic anatomical features of fishes and explain their ecological relevance
- Students will be able to reliably quantify, on preserved specimens, 13 common measurements used to describe fish size and body shape.
- Students will be able to implement geometric morphometric tools to quantify fish shape from photographs.
- Students will be able to use bibliographic search engines and basic Boolean logic to search for relevant scientific papers
- Students will be able to read scientific papers and identify the main questions and hypotheses tested as well as the results that support (or disagree with) the hypotheses.
- Students will be able to critically evaluate a scientific hypothesis in terms of its interest level, feasibility, scope and pre-existing work.
- Students will be able to devise full developed scientific hypotheses and predictions by synthesizing information from a variety of sources.
- Students will be able to explain why we need a phylogeny when analyzing evolutionary patterns among species.
- Students will be able to write code in R to read in data & phylogenies, create graphs and visualize the evolution of traits upon a phylogeny.
- Students will be able to devise data exploration strategies and evaluate the resulting patterns.
- Students will be able to write a scientific abstract to describe their research for a lay audience.
- Students will be able to design scientific poster and powerpoint presentations.
- Students will be able to present and explain their scientific research hypotheses, methods, results and conclusions to a general audience.
- Students will be able to critically evaluate quantitative results and design further analyses to clarify and enhance the research