Teaching about biodiversity from phytosociology: evaluation and conservation

Abstract

In order to transform the previous erroneous ideas acquired by many of the students, a teaching outside the classroom is proposed, making the students themselves the ones who build their own knowledge from practice. Analyzing alpha, beta and gamma diversity, intrinsic alpha diversity must be measured through the characteristic species, gamma through the companion species, and beta through the gamma/alpha relationship, taking into account this relationship the lower the beta. The higher the conservation status of the community, if beta = 1 it means that there is a balance between characteristic species and companions, if beta is < 1 it means that there is a predominance of characteristic species over companions. As a result to be taken into consideration, it is observed in the inventory analysis that anthropic action is the cause of the changes in diversity, which translates into an instability of the association, being able to change one community for another. For this reason, we consider it is necessary to teach about the meaning of characteristic and companion species, since the student must know how to discern between both types of species, which leads us to learn the ecological niche of the species.