merging Botany and Zoology Departments (fwd)

[karstad - schueler]

Sylvia Hope wrote:

> Biological science department mergers are certainly correlated with
> increasing focus on levels of organization
> rather than taxonomic groups in American
> universities.  But I think the changing focus is the cause and mergers
> are the result, not the other way around.
>
>           and:
>
> I think that the merging of biological disciplines has much to do with
> advanced development of evolutionary theory and increased perception
> of common interests among organismal biologists.  This is a good
> thing, but the integration of disciplines may go to far if it erodes
> opportunities for students to do basic field work and and careful
> functional/morphological studies, emphasizing metanalysis at the
> expense of original observation.

* and it may over-ride teaching about the immense range of taxa that
students must know about if they are to think plausibly about
evolutionary theory and diversity.

fred schueler.
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Frederick W. Schueler, Aleta Karstad, Jennifer Helene Schueler.
Bishops Mills, Grenville Co, Ontario, on the Smiths Falls Limestone
Plain: 18TVE 446 687, 44* 52'N 75* 42'W   bckcdb at istar.ca
Natural History Exploration, Interpretation, Illustration, & Analysis
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