Invertebrate Zoology
The syllabus can be downloaded from our D2L class page.
Annoucements:
- INVERTBRATE ZOOLOGY IS GOING ON-LINE DURING THE SUSPENSION OF CLASSES RESULTING FROM THE CORONA VIRUS PANDEMIC. Instructions for assignments and 'take-home' quizzes and exams will be posted on our class D2L page, not on these pages (however, these pages with lecture links will be maintained). Basically, you will complete your lab notebook as a virtual notebook in which I will supply you "digital" specimens to key out. In lecture, I will enhance the lecture readings to supply the material you will use to complete the two remaining lecture exams. Keep up with the lecture notes as I post them, and stay aware of exam/quiz dates.
Biology 3310
Dr. Dirnberger
"Indeed, invertebrate zoology was not a term that then existed (since Lamarck was
to be the first to distinguish vertebrates from invertebrates). What he [Lamarck]
was occupying was the chair of all the zoology that nobody wanted. Birds, mammals,
reptiles, fishes-- there were men eager to profess them all. What was left over
-- in God's good creation and the dusty museum drawers -- was a lot of vermin in the
way of snails, squids, spiders, insects, scorpions, worms, and such coquillage as
oysters, lobsters, shrimps and the like. This protean rubbish had baffled Linnaeus
and all the other systematizers, and it had neither been classified nor seriously
examined. In short, it was in limbo -- the midden of God's lowlier efforts. And it
was nineteen-twentieths of the animal kingdom."
-- A description of invertebrate zoology as it existed when the naturalist Jean Baptiste
Lamarck was appointed its chair following the French Revolution: -Donald Culross Peattie,
Green Laurels: The Lives and Achievements of the Great Naturalists. Simon and Shuster,
Inc., New York, 1936.
"It will be observed, then, that our efforts are not merely to accumulate as great a mass of animal remains as possible. On the contrary, we are expending even more time than would be required for the collection of the specimens alone, in rendering what we do obtain as permanently valuable as we know how, to the ecologist as well as to the systematist. It is quite probable that the facts of distribution, life history, and economic status may finally prove to be of more far-reaching value, than whatever information is obtainable exclusively from the specimens themselves." -- Joseph Grinnell, zoologist and early ecologist who developed and implemented a detailed protocol for recording field observations
