A. John Gatz, Professor Office: Rm. 331 CWSC |
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Courses taught:
Professor Gatz regularly teaches four of the departmental course offerings: Human Biology (ZOOL 101), Evolution (ZOOL 261), Population and Community Ecology (ZOOL 347), and The Vertebrates (ZOOL 331). All of these courses are in areas of particular interest and often research expertise for Dr. Gatz. The first of the courses is one designed for non-majors that examines the structure and function of the human body from an evolutionary perspective, i.e., what our bodies were naturally selected to do. Evolution serves both majors and non-majors and covers both evolutionary mechanisms and patterns as well as an overview of historical evolution. The ecology course emphasizes how to do ecological studies and analyze their results; it includes weekly field trips to local sites for gathering data. The Vertebrates examines the evolutionary continuum of the morphology of vertebrates and emphasizes how the structure of different groups varies in response to the selective forces operating on the organisms. click here to go back to the top of the page Dr. Gatz's own research has spanned areas as diverse as thermal effects
on jellyfish, to algal entry into salamander eggs, to mating behavior
of frogs and toads, to field studies of competition in trout of the
southern Appalachians, to studies on the foraging behavior of beavers.
He has published in more than a dozen national and international journals
as well as having contributed to various government documents. He has
worked both at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory and Oak Ridge National
Laboratory. The work for which he is most well-known are his studies
in which he used the morphology of different species of fishes to infer
their ecological interactions and understand their community ecology.
Recent publications with students have included work using the "Index
of Biotic Integrity" to assess the ecological health of central
Ohio streams and work assessing changes in size of a species of lizard
in response to a change in the competitive environment. He is currently
starting his tenth year of a massive (21,000 fishes individually tagged)
study of several species of fishes in a local stream, a study in which
many independent studies students and a variety of summer research students
have participated. Already, the data have shown that electrofishing
- a standard fisheries technique currently under some criticism - does
not harm these fish. A variety of other paradigms related to the patterns
of movement of stream fishes seem poised to fall as analyses of the
data continue. Additional analyses of growth rates and survival both
independently and as related to movement within the stream will be possible
using the data. |
Department
of Zoology |
| Last updated: September 18, 2007 |