Background/Question/Methods Creating authentic research experiences in an upper-level behavioral biology lab under normal semester circumstances can be challenging. When students are unable to physically be in lab spaces in remote and hybrid learning classes, completing authentic research experiences in animal behavior can feel particularly daunting. The labs and databases provided by the multi-year Squirrel-Net project enabled me to provide my students with two multi-lab research projects in which they could observe animal behavior, design experiments, and analyze real data all within the constraints of a virtual semester. In my behavioral ecology class at Agnes Scott College, a small all-women’s liberal arts college in near Atlanta, GA USA, we used two of the available Squirrel-Net modules. For the first module, students completed squirrel observations wherever they were geographically located and within small groups posed their own research questions they could answer using the data they collected and data from the shared national database. For the second module, students were given several weeks to design, implement, and refine a study of their own exploring factors influencing squirrel foraging behavior. For both modules, students were able to use data from the Squirrel-Net national database to inform their work and expand their analyses. Additionally, throughout the semester I incorporated guest speakers whose research focused on foraging behavior in a variety of animals. Results/Conclusions While the squirrels were not always cooperative, the students always were. Students were able to practice a number of skills important in the field of behavioral ecology, and in STEM in general, including making and sharing standardized observations of animal behavior, designing an experiment, analyzing real-world data, presenting their findings graphically and to an audience. Overall, the students enjoyed the labs. They were particularly appreciative of being able to do school work away from a computer screen during an all-online semester and to do hands-on science during a time when that was particularly difficult. As an insect biologist teaching at a small liberal arts college, I very much appreciated the additional resources and support that the Squirrel-Net group provided, such as access to the multi-year, multi-campus database and to mammologists.
