Topic 6a:
Succession
Learning Goals for Day:
Ø Play Floristic Relay game!
TIEE
Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology - Volume 3, April 2005
The Floristic Relay Game: A Board Game to Teach Plant Community Succession and Disturbance Dynamics
Elena Ortiz-Barney*, Juliet C. Stromberg, and Vanessa B. Beauchamp
Arizona State UniversitySchool of Life Sciences
P.O. Box 874601, Tempe, AZ 85287-4601
This lesson is designed to introduce students to the concepts of succession and plant community dynamics. It teaches that plant communities are dynamic, that is, they change over time and space, and that these changes result from interactions between plants, their biotic and abiotic environments, and chance events.
Students play a board game in which each student represents an imaginary plant species. Each time the game is played, the students are conducting a type of theoretical experiment or simulation. Students explore plant community dynamics by playing the game and interacting with each other (as different plant species) and responding to chance events. At the end of the game, students report on the results and discuss with the class what they have learned. To apply their new knowledge, students predict changes in the community and attempt to make the community change in specific ways.
We decided to teach this topic using a game for several reasons. Games are fun and students easily learn complicated sets of rules in order to play a game. Also, games are dynamic and so are an effective way to teach a dynamic subject. Third, it can take many years to observe succession in nature; the game condenses this time and allows students to watch plant community dynamics within a class period. Fourth, current curriculum about succession is limited in its applicability because it is designed to take advantage of regional examples such as old-field succession in temperate hardwood forests. Because it uses imaginary species, this game can be played anywhere in the world.
In this lab, students play a board game designed to introduce the concepts of disturbance dynamics and succession in plant communities. Students explore the dynamics of an imaginary ecosystem through the rules and outcomes of the game. Student randomly draw cards which present chance events and specific interaction scenarios to game players, the cards determine the path of succession taken by the plant community during the game. At the end of the game, students diagram the species composition and report on and discuss the reactions of different plant species to competition and disturbance events and the role of these interactions and disturbance events in shaping the plant community. Students can also discuss the veracity of the game as compared to real plant communities. To evaluate what they have learned, students play a version of the game where they play the role of land manager. They stack the deck to increase or decrease the occurrence of different types of disturbance events or directly control the sequence of events to produce a desired result, for example fire events simulating fire management. Because imaginary plant species are used to play the game, there are no regional constraints on where the game can be played. As an extension for more advanced students, students can design their own version of the game based on local plant communities.
Through playing the game, students will learn that:
Specifically, at the end of the lesson, students will be able to:
An important and often misunderstood concept in ecology is succession. Succession refers to the series of changes observed in a plant community following a disturbance event (Connell and Slayter 1977). A disturbance event, such as a wildfire, flood, landslide or hurricane, is an event that changes ecosystem structure and resource availability (Pickett and White 1985). For an example of succession, think of a severe forest fire that kills many trees. What was once a closed canopy forest with very little light reaching the ground is now a very open and bright place. Plants and seeds that were in the shade can take advantage of the new available resources, including sunlight. The plant species that will thrive in the new, open environment may be different from those that grew under the closed forest canopy. These plants are called early successional plants because they thrive in recently disturbed environments. They are also called colonizers, ruderals or weeds. Over time, as colonizers grow, they change the environment again (by shading, or changing soil conditions), which creates opportunities for a different set of plant species. These plant species that establish after the early successional species are called late successional species. They are generally less tolerant of disturbance events. These species also often grow more slowly and live longer than early successional species and only become prevalent a while after the disturbance event. Plant communities can be thought of as going through cycles of disturbance followed by succession followed by disturbance and so on. This is not to say that these cycles, and the resulting communities, are ever identical or exactly repeatable.
In this lab, students explore the dynamics of plant communities, that is, how plant communities change over time and space as a result of interactions between plants, their biotic and abiotic environment, and chance events. The concepts of succession and disturbance dynamics are timely given the extent to which human-caused disturbances, such as logging and land development, are influencing global ecosystems and the extent to which natural disturbances, such as fires and floods, are actively managed. Informed voters and citizens should know about disturbance and succession in plant communities. Knowledge of these processes will help them make decisions about land conservation, wildlife habitat restoration and natural resource management practices.
In the game, each student plays the role of one of six different imaginary plant species. The student with the most plants of his or her species in the community wins the game. As students play the game, they learn that the six plants respond differently to the disturbances. They also learn that plants interact with each other. Each round begins with an event card randomly drawn from a deck of cards. All the players then move across the playing board based upon that one event and the response of their given plant species. When two or more players land on the same spot, they must draw an interaction card for each pair of interacting players.
The rules handout explains how to play, step by step. The game ends when a player reaches the Finish square. At the end of the game, students count the event cards that were played, and record the number of each event type on their worksheet (Figure 8). Students also record the position of the players on the playing board. Using the sample diagram (Figure 9), have students diagram what their plant community looked like at the end of the game (based on the premise that the further a player travels on the board, the greater the number of individuals of their species). If any players are at the Start box at the end of the game, their species has zero plants in the diagram. After an initial discussion following the first game, ask students to predict the results of a game played without the Disturbance Event cards. They can play again and test their prediction. To evaluate their learning, ask students to “manage” disturbance by stacking the event deck to favor a particular species. Then have them test the results of their management by playing a game with the stacked deck.
Number of players: 6
Object of the game: First player to reach the “Finish” square wins.
Step 1: Choose a dealer.
Step 2: All players, including the dealer, choose a game piece. Place game pieces in the “Start” square.
Step 3: Dealer shuffles Event Cards and places them face down in Future Events spot on the playing board. Shuffle and place the Interaction Cards face down in their spot, and deal one Character Card to each player.
Step 4: The dealer draws the first Event Card and places it face up in the Current Event spot.
Step 5: Each player then plays according to the Event and Character Card directions, starting with the dealer and going clockwise.
Step 6: After all players have their turn, check the board for players who landed on the same square. These players are interacting.
· Interactions are played in the same order as Events (clockwise starting at the dealer)
· Two at a time, the interacting players draw one Interaction Card.
· Play according to the interaction card.
Step 7: Repeat Steps 4-6 until a player wins. Record the order of the players and the number of each type of event that occurred during the game.
Some possible discussion questions include:
· How would you describe the diagram produced, is it more like a forest, a grassland or a shrubland?
· What happens during a fire? A landslide? Grazing? What about during no disturbance periods?
· Which species tend to increase in abundance during times of no disturbance? What traits do they have in common?
· How do early and late successional species differ from each other? Which life-history traits might allow a species to respond well to a fire event. Which traits might make a species a better competitor?
· What would happen if we stacked the deck to reduce the number of Disturbance Cards? Try it, was your prediction correct?
· Will the winner always be the same? Why or why not?
· How might changes in the plant community affect other properties of the ecosystem?
· How does this imaginary system compare to real ecosystems in the number of species?
· How would you change the deck to ensure that your species wins? Try it, did it work?
This activity has been used as an introduction to succession with little or no introduction to the activity. Simply distribute materials, read the rules with students, and walk them through the first round of playing. At the end of game playing, ask students to fill out worksheets. Distribute discussion questions for students to answer and use these to introduce the main concepts of succession and disturbance dynamics.
The following comments could be shared with students, as part of their introduction to the lab.
On teaching succession: A common misconception of succession is that it always progresses the same way towards the same end community. That is, if a plant community is disturbed and then left alone, it will always return to its initial condition. In textbooks, succession is often depicted in this way, as a directional, deterministic process (Gibson, 1996). This view of succession as a singular pathway of progression from a cleared, recently disturbed site to mature climax vegetation is outdated. Current theories suggest that succession will not always create the same community that existed before the disturbance. There are multiple possible outcomes, depending on many factors including the order of arrival of colonizing species, which varies over time and space and can depend on chance (Diamond and Case, 1986). Also, because disturbances can re-occur frequently, the plant community might always be in a state of flux, never reaching a climax state (Pickett and White, 1985). This lesson attempts to address this misconception, and teach succession as a dynamic process that can be reasonably, but not completely, predictable. By teaching about succession through its mechanisms we can avoid teaching some of the misconceptions about climax communities.
On using a game to teach succession: This game is a dynamic way to teach a dynamic subject. There is a body of literature on the use of games in learning (for a review see Ellington et. al., 1998). Games have been shown to increase student motivation, increase retention, and in some cases, shorten the time to teach concepts to naïve students (Randel et al., 1992). We decided to teach this topic using a game for several reasons. Games are fun. Students easily learn complicated sets of rules in order to play a game. We can use this to our advantage by making analogies between game rules and the theories and concepts we want to teach (Kaplan and Kaplan, 1982). As students play the game, they learn the rules, which are analogous to the mechanisms of succession. Students begin building their own conceptual model of the mechanisms of succession through game play. Also, even though games are no better than traditional teaching methods at teaching factual information (Randel et al., 1992), they seem to be more effective in teaching dynamics (Monroe, 1968). Third, it can take many years to observe succession in nature; the game condenses this time and allows students to watch plant community dynamics within a class period. Fourth, current curriculum about succession is limited in its applicability because it is designed to take advantage of regional examples such as old-field succession in temperate hardwood forests. Because it uses imaginary species, this game can be played anywhere in the world. And last, we wanted to create a system where students could interactively explore the plant community dynamics, rather than just observe them. They can experiment with the plant community by manipulating the disturbance processes, and observe the changes that occur as a result of their actions.