Creating a Bat Conservation Plan for Your County in South Carolina

Lesson Overview

Biology I

Student will analyze quantitative data using South Carolina Department of Natural Resources’ Rare, Threatened and Endangered Species Inventory Data Base as well as the South Carolina Bat Conservation Plan. This data will provide students the information they need to create a conservation plan specific to their county’s South Carolina bats to propose to school leadership. This plan will enable students to take an active role in citizen science in South Carolina.

B-LS2-1. Use mathematical and/or computational representations to support explanations of biotic and abiotic factors that affect carrying capacity of ecosystems at different scales.

LS2.A: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems

Ecosystems have carrying capacities, which are limits to the numbers of organisms and populations they can support. These limits result from such factors as the availability of living and nonliving resources and from such challenges such as predation, competition, and disease. Organisms would have the capacity to produce populations of great size were it not for the fact that environments and resources are finite. This fundamental tension affects the abundance (number of individuals) of species in any given ecosystem.