Plant-Animal Interactions

This is a course I took at University of Maryland with Dr. Karin Burghardt.

For the course we made an “Interaction Notebook” where we logged observations of different plant-animal interactions we had observed over the course of the class. It was interesting and now I notice plant-animal interactions constantly!

Another project was a Synthesis Paper responding to various prompts. This one was responding to “Is cheating common [in mutualisms]? What conditions might favor cheating?”

My first true attempt at a synthesis style paper. I kind of think it’s mediocre, the concept was fun and it was a challenging style of lit review and writing, but I don’t love how my final product turned out. I don’t know if my conclusions were fully substantial based on the reading and reviewing I did, and the writing could use some cleaning up. It’s fun to look back on my old writing though. It can be nice to see and recognize places I could improve, it’s a reminder that I’m a better writer now.

The final project for this course was our choice, and I chose to use ArcGIS Online to make a “gardening guide” about the Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillar and it’s host plant, the Spicebush. While not perfect, I enjoyed making it, and researching the Spicebush Swallowtail was the highlight of my semester!