Inclusive practices for diverse student populations: Experimental Biology 2017.

As student populations become more diverse, it is essential for educators, administrators, and institutions to implement practices that ensure the success of all students. This is particularly true in the sciences, as students from traditionally underrepresented populations in STEM compose an increasingly greater proportion of the national student demographic. The Teaching Section of the American Physiological Society sponsored a symposium, "Inclusive Practices for Diverse Student Populations," at 2017 Experimental Biology in Chicago, IL, introducing practices that promote inclusion in diverse student populations in STEM. The symposium began with an introduction to quantitative and qualitative assessment strategies of equity and inclusion. The second half of the symposium discussed structural bias and effective inclusive practices.

Connectivity increases trophic subsidies in fragmented landscapes.

Landscape corridors mitigate the negative effects of habitat fragmentation by increasing dispersal. Corridors also increase biodiversity in connected habitat fragments, suggestive of metacommunity dynamics. What is unknown in this case is the mechanisms through which metacommunity dynamics act. Working in a large-scale fragmentation experiment, we tested the effect of corridors on the movement of prey species and subsequent effects on predator nutrition (which we call trophic subsidies). We enriched plants of central patches with 15 N, then measured δ15 N in green lynx spiders, the most abundant insect predator, in patches that were either connected to or isolated from the enriched patch. We found that corridors increased prey movement, as they increased spider δ15 N by 40% in connected patches. Corridors also improved spider body condition, increasing nitrogen relative to carbon. We suggest a novel mechanism, trophic subsidies, through which corridors may increase the stability or size of populations in connected landscapes.