Trading cards are small 2.5″ x 3.5″ pieces of paper about a specific subject that were created to be traded with others (think baseball cards and artist trading cards). The only difference between artist trading cards (ATCs) and baseball cards are that ATCs are decorated by each individual before they are traded.
Biology graduate student, Jay M. Fitzsimmons, put the trading card concept to good use recently during a presentation he made to a group of young naturalists. Invited to speak about his dissertation research, Fitzsimmons designed a creative learning activity to replace his standard PowerPoint presentation. He describes this activity in Local Species Trading Cards: An Activity to Encourage Scientific Creativity and Ecological Predictions from Species’ Traits.
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Fitzsimmons’ Challenge: Explain PhD research to children ages 8-18.
Fitzsimmons’ Solution: Engage young naturalists in an activity that is enjoyable, sparks creativity and encourages critical thinking.
Fitzsimmons’ current research focus is about how Canadian butterflies respond to climate change. As Fitzsimmons (2012) explains in his paper, his primary research question is, Can a butterfly species’ response to climate change be predicted based on a species’ traits?
To explain this concept to members of a young naturalists club, Fitzsimmons (2012) created stacks of butterfly trading cards. On one side of a card was a photograph of a species of butterfly and the other side contained a summary of this species’ traits. He chose 12 species local to his location in Ottawa, Canada and created a stack of 12 trading cards for each member (Fitzsimmons, 2012).
After introducing members to his research, he distributed the stacks of cards he prepared. He then instructed members to sort the cards into two piles — one for butterfly species “likely to shift north rapidly” in response to climate change and the other for butterfly species “unlikely to shift north rapidly” in response to climate change (Fitzsimmons, 2012).
Each member paired up with another member and together they sorted through their decks of cards, discussed the traits of each species, and made predictions about how a given species might respond to climate change. Club members were given 20 minutes to sort through their cards and then shared their predictions and justified their thinking during a group discussion (Fitzsimmons, 2012).
In his review, Fitzsimmons (2012) states the activity was well-received by both the young naturalists and participating adults. He also mentions that during this activity, club members were able to justify their predictions the same way professional biologists would, but “with less jargon” (Fitzsimmons, 2012). In light of this positive outcome, he encourages educators to modify his activity when teaching other natural history subjects.
Fitzsimmons’ activity can be adapted easily to encourage an interest in plants, and even a bit of botanical art along the way, especially if art-specific papers that can handle different media are used.
How can we use ATCs to teach about plants? Let’s toss around some ideas.
How about trait-based studies of plant adaptations?
What about plant-pollinator relationships?
Life history patterns? Resource allocation? Plant communities?
What else comes to mind? Share your ideas below.
Literature Cited
Fitzsimmons, Jay M. 2012. Local species trading cards: An activity to encourage scientific creativity and ecological predictions from species’ traits. Journal of Natural History Education and Experience. 6:10-15.Web. http://naturalhistorynetwork.org/journal/articles/local-species-trading-cards-an-activity-to-encourage-scientific-creativity-and-ecological-predictions-from-species-traits [accessed 24 January 2013]
Also See
ArtPlantae Today 
A couple of years ago, I self-published a picture book that features my local native species. I also created a set of trading cards with each of the animals in my book. I have a couple of different ways I use the trading cards, depending on the age group. For example, in K and grade1, sorting them into groups by characteristics is fun: feather, fur, skin, scales, etc. They can be sorted by habitat, or adaptations for a little older groups. I hadn’t thought of using them to discuss climate change, but now I will!
Thank you, Linda. Your trading cards look great. I bet the kids love using them to learn.
Thank you very much for profiling my article! It was a lot of fun to play science with the kids with these cards. I think science is awesome, and finding out about the natural world in our neighbourhood is a lot of fun. That’s what I tried to do with this activity: combine fun and learning about local nature in a way that let the kids be creative. Thank you very much, Tania, for such a nice (and accurate!) description of my activity. Hopefully others can put the activity to good use for plants!
If you’re inclined to learn about what plant traits seem to be associated with conservation issues, and if you like reading research articles, here are a few scientific articles on the subject.
Lavergne, S., J. Molina, and M. Debussche. 2006. Fingerprints of environmental change on the rare mediterranean flora: a 115-year study. Global Change Biology 12:1466-1478.
Article behind paywall, but abstract at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2006.01183.x/abstract
-This study looks at which plant species increased or decreased in abundance over time in a part of France. Certain traits seemed to be associated with abundance declines.
Lenoir, J., J. C. Gégout, P. A. Marquet, P. de Ruffray, and H. Brisse. 2008. A significant upward shift in plant species optimum elevation during the 20th century. Science 320:1768-1771.
Article behind paywall, but abstract at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/320/5884/1768.abstract
-This study looks at forest understory plants in mountains of France (what’s up with France being the place for these studies?), comparing species’ optimal elevation in the early-mid 1900’s to their optimal elevation in the late 1900’s. They found certain types of plants shifted uphill more than others.
van Kleunen, M., E. Weber, and M. Fischer. 2010. A meta-analysis of trait differences between invasive and non-invasive plant species. Ecology Letters 13:235-245.
Article available for free: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01418.x/abstract
-This study is a meta-analysis, which means it’s a mega-study analyzing lots of other studies. It asked whether certain traits made plants more likely than others to become invasive. Sure enough, certain traits were associated with invasive plant species.
PS- I volunteer as Journal Manager for The Canadian Field-Naturalist, which is a scientific journal about Canadian nature. I’ve added a link to ArtPlantae on our blogroll (http://canadianfieldnaturalist.blogspot.ca/) because I think many of our blog’s visiters would appreciate it. Excellent blog!
Jay,
Thank you for the encouraging words and thank you for the great references. Yes, I like reading research articles. I’m happy in a library. I will certainly take a look at these articles, as will other readers, I’m sure. And thank you for adding ArtPlantae to your blog roll at The Canadian Field Naturalist. Much appreciated.