Write a paper on the descriptive and historical biogeography of a family-sized clade. When preparing your presentation, you should use at least five peer-reviewed references.
Basic Structure of Presentation or Paper
Introduction to your clade
Introduces the taxonomic group of focus, and each of its genera, species, or subspecies
What is known and not known about this group
Distribution of your clade
Describe the distribution of your subgroups across different spatial scales
Think back to how we can view species distributions at numerous spatial scales (e.g., geographic distribution, regional occurrence in particular habitats, local patterns of abundance)
Compare and contrast your different species groups in these criteria: which species are rare, which are more common, which are endemic to certain areas, are they habitat specialists or generalists, do the species overlap in their ranges, or are they broadly disjunct, do they hybridize?
Historical biogeography of your clade
What is the hypothesized phylogeographic history of your groups?
Summarize the current understanding of the events (e.g., geological, climatic) and processes (e.g., adaptation, dispersal) that have resulted in the diversification and current distribution of your taxon and its subgroups
You should find published phylogenies that include all members of your focal group, and ideally that show dates for divergence times
Conclusion
Other Requirements
Figures: Include a minimum of two figures:
a map (or combination of maps) showing the distribution of your taxonomic group, including the location and distribution of subgroups
a phylogenetic tree for the relationships among the sub-groups within your taxon
It is OK to use figures from the internet; make sure you do two things 1) give credit to the source and 2) create your own comprehensive figure legends a reader should be able to interpret all the information conveyed in your figure in the figure legend (without referring to the text).
Sources: Include a minimum of 5 sources. The majority of your sources should come from peer-reviewed scientific journals. I would recommend starting with a general reference source like Wikipedia and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility for your clade, usually a family group, and then jump into searching for the papers you will use to inform your presentation/paper. As you are upper-division students, I hope you all are familiar with using the UAA/APU Consortium Library to locate relevant sources. When you go through their portal, you will have access to all of the papers that the University pays for.
Google Scholar – If you like this way of searching, you can still go through the Consortium Library, and it will make sure that you will have access to all that the University pays for.
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