Alyse Larkin participated in the Scientific Research and Networking (SciREN) event hosted by the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences at the Pine Knoll Shores Aquarium. Alyse shared her presentation, “Plankton Power: How Phytoplankton Shape our World,” with over 65 elementary, middle, and high school teachers from all over North Carolina and Virginia.
The purpose of the SciREN event was for local researchers to share their work with teachers and provide them with teaching materials suitable for use in primary and secondary schools. PhD students, laboratory technicians, and faculty from both UNC and Duke participated in the event, giving presentations on species interactions, coastal habitats, food webs, marine predators, microbial populations, humpback whales, and much more.
Alyse’s presentation covered food web dynamics, phytoplankton classification, and human interaction with the oceans. The lesson plans that Alyse developed teach students how to describe the interconnected nature of ecosystems, explain the importance of photosynthesis, and infer possible effects of human activities on ecosystem functioning. You can find Alyse’s teaching materials on this website under…
