A typical lab may involve safety glasses and white coats, but biology students in Rebecca Effler’s ecology class donned life jackets and took up paddles for class yesterday morning. Canoeing the University lakes is not completely unusual for these students to learn lab techniques in the field. Ten students paired in canoes and equipped with measuring tape and a GPS locator paddled to the Bird Refuge in the middle of University Lake to measure duck box dimensions and their distances from land and from the road Monday morning. The wooden boxes sit on top of stilts sticking a few feet out of the shallow lake water and provide a safe nesting area for wood ducks which inhabit the area. The measurements will allow students to compare what dimensions and locations best serve the ducks and protect them from predators. Another section went out later Monday afternoon, and more will be visiting the peninsula throughout the week.The wood duck project was suggested by a student who saw the boxes around the lakes and became interested in their purpose, said Effler, a biological sciences instructor who teaches the principles of ecology lab. The challenge is planning and obtaining resources for the projects, she said. At the beginning of the semester, students had to sign a form acknowledging the field requirement to the class, said Amy Ko, a biological sciences senior in the course.”I had canoed before, so I was pretty comfortable,” she said. Each lab report the students complete requires a trip to the field, but the classes focused on the service-learning component of the course this week by doing initial research about wood duck nesting habitats. Later classes will compare the boxes’ usage and efficiency based on the factors students measured, Effler said. Other excursions have involved collecting insects and measuring invasive species in Bluebonnet Swamp, said Jesse Beckemeyer, biological sciences senior. Many of the wood duck boxes were installed by private individuals while others were put in place several years ago by members of the University’s chapter of Alpha Gamma Rho, a national agricultural fraternity, Effler said.”We’ve received a lot of support from the community,” she said. People who have personally installed boxes have expressed interest in having them evaluated by the classes as well, Effler said. Other initiatives ecology classes have undertaken include planting cypress trees around the refuge to increase native plant diversity and widen the land edge, Effler said. On July 8, students in the ecology lab summer session conducted invasive species studies at Bluebonnet Swamp, said Alyssa Hakes, biological sciences doctoral student and lab instructor. The summer project allowed students to examine whether invasive-species removal projects previous classes have conducted were beneficial, Hakes said. Students found the removal and replacement projects were effective, she said. —-Contact Olga Kourilova at [email protected]