EcoBeaker

This laboratory recreates the famous experiments of Paine and colleagues in the Pacific Northwest with the sea star Pisaster (and 8 other marine intertidal species). Students do transplant experiments to figure out competitive relationships and sample gut contents to construct a food web. Next they use their data to predict what will happen when each predator is removed from the system. Finally, they do the removal experiments and compare their results with their predictions. This is a great introductory lab in that it explores basic ecological concepts and although it is not difficult, it asks students to think critically, synthesizing experimental data to make predictions. It also provides a nice foundation for discussions of the important roles that different species can play in a community.
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Using a simulation of a population of Fender's blue butterfly, an endangered species that is endemic to western Oregon (USA) prairies, students are challenged to propose and justify (based on their own data) a habitat restoration scheme that will maximize survivorship of butterflies, given pre-existing patches of prairie. Students first learn about edge effects and how landscape features such as corridors and stepping stones might affect population survival. They then explore how using models (e.g., conducting sensitivity analyses) can help guide research. Improvements to this lab were suggested by users of previous versions, which have been very popular both with instructors and students.

Recreates the classic experiment of adding fish to a fish-free lake and observing the effects across different trophic levels. In this very open-ended lab, students are asked to observe what happens when fish are added. Then they are taught to use a set of realistic experimental tools such as species additions and subtractions, controlled tank experiments, behavioral observations to find feeding preferences, and more. With these, they must generate and test hypotheses to explain the trophic cascades and competitive dynamics they observe in the lake.
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Using a model of succession from grasses to trees, students start out by observing a successional sequence without disturbance. Then they get to start setting fires. By systematically varying the size and frequency of fires, they recreate the standard textbook graph of the intermediate disturbance hypothesis showing that species diversity is highest at intermediate levels of disturbance. In an open-ended advanced section of the lab, students can alter the susceptibility of different species to burning and their succession rate to see how these factors influence diversity. This lab is often cited as a favorite by both instructors and students for its content, and also for the graphics that display red fire rushing through the forest. Although the ideas are typically introduced in upper-level ecology courses, the lab is straightforward and emphasizes data collection and graphing, making it applicable for courses for students without a scientific background.
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As "virtual" commercial fisheries managers, students must decide on a strategy for fishing that maximizes their profits while minimizing extinction risk. The first sections of the lab investigate fixed-catch, fixed-effort, and adaptive management strategies for regulating fisheries. In the last part, students are challenged to come up with their own strategy and to try to beat their classmates' harvests over a 30-year period. The model is designed to include real-life complexities, including an allee effect and the fundamental challenge of population estimation. This lab provides a great foundation for discussions about case studies of fisheries collapses and why managing stocks is so difficult.

Students try mark/recapture sampling on a population of pigeons in a park. Initially the population is closed with no mortality or other complicating factors, and students can manipulate the sampling effort, resampling effort, and time to wait between sampling and resampling. In a more advanced part of the lab, students can add in real-world complications such as changing the death rates or speed of movement of marked vs. unmarked birds, adding in immigration and emigration, and setting a rate at which markings are lost. Many people are using this lab to replace labs with beans or beetles in pans or other "simulated" mark/recapture situations, either before going out in the field or when the time available/weather doesn't allow field trials of mark/recapture.