In this role-playing game, students with use speech, sound, and gestures to learn how lemurs and similar organisms can be found in different rainforests due to their ecological niches.

In this role-playing game, students with use speech, sound, and gestures to:

1. learn how lemurs and similar organisms can be found in different rainforests.
2. compare and contrast different organisms with respect to their ecological niches.

Animal Data Sheet worksheets
Animal Role-Play sheets
Teacher Background sheet
Scavenger Hunt
pencils
overhead projector (optional)

• habitat: the place where an organism lives, giving it necessary food, water, and shelter
• environment: one’s surroundings; all of the living and non-living factors that act on an organism and influence its survival and development
• niche: the specific ecological role a species plays in its community, including where it lives, what it eats, and how it interacts with other organisms

Before Your Visit

Preparation

1. Print out the teacher background sheet. You can use this master list to help the students with clues, and provide detail for discussions.
2. Print out a set of the role-playing sheets. You will need 6 actors.
3. Print out Animal Data Sheet worksheets for the remaining “audience members.” You may choose to distribute paperwork to individuals, student pairs, or larger groups; alternatively, conduct the exercise as a class using an overhead projector.

Introduction

Have students share what they already know about lemurs. What do they look like, sound like, and act like? What might they eat, and where are they from? Make a list on the board. Then introduce the island of Madagascar – the home to all lemurs – on a map of the world. Tell students they are about to meet three lemurs and three other monkey-like creatures, with the help of some burgeoning actors.

Procedure

1. Hand out individual role-playing sheets to 6 students that want to act out their animal role. Students should keep the name, picture, and biography of their animal a secret for now.
2. Pass out Animal Data Sheets to the audience.
3. Explain the activity: Actors will read their description and act out a part of it. The rest of the class should listen during the first round, and try to identify which animal the student represents based on the images provided. During repeat performances, pairs should complete the blank spaces on the worksheet.
4. Use the teacher worksheet to discuss the ecological roles all these animals play. Structure the content according to your curriculum needs, and the interests of your students. For example, all of the animals are seed dispersers because they all eat fruit and subsequently defecate the seeds out. All of the animals are prey for some kind of predator.

Wrap-Up

Nearly all of these animals are threatened by human-caused habitat destruction. What can we do to help save these habitats? Tell students that they will visit the California Academy of Sciences, they will explore the Islands of Evolution hall. Here they will find more information about the three lemurs portrayed in the role-play.

At the Academy

Preparation

1. Make a copy of the scavenger hunt for each student.

Procedure

1. Gather in the center of the Islands of Evolution exhibit. The lemur exhibit is located behind the display covering baobab trees. Because the entire class can not study the Ring-tailed lemur cases at once, consider splitting the group in two. Students can begin searching for photos of lemurs scattered throughout the exhibit. Or, consider the optional student task.
2. OPTIONAL STUDENT TASK: As you wander through the Islands of Evolution exhibit, keep an eye out for an organism you find particularly fascinating. Try to discover its ecological role, or niche. Where does it live and how does it act? How might its role overlap with another? Does another organism depend on it to survive? Remember a detail about its niche that you can share with the class.

Back at School

Procedure

1. Lead a discussion with the students about how multiple species of animals can live together in the same habitats by establishing different niches. Let students share using examples from the pre-visit activity, or from new discoveries at the museum.
   • What are some differences between ecological niches that help animals to coexist? (time of day it is active, preferred habitat, preferred diet)
   • What kinds of resources do animals share?
   • Who would like to share an organism they found particularly interesting? What do they remember about its niche?
2. Take out the Animal Data Sheet worksheets previously completed by the students. Reviewing the images and recorded data for the three lemurs, ask student how these animals can coexist in Madagascar.
3. Now, tell students that the three other animals are similar to the lemurs in life-style, but live in tropical forests around the world. Each one roughly matches a lemur in Madagascar, in terms of ecological niche. Can they correctly match all three pairs?

• At the Academy: Visit the rainforest exhibit and see the actual habitat for the kinkajou and howler monkey.

• Back at School: Research the conservation status of each of the animals featured in the pre-visit activity. Identify ways in which we can help protect their different habitats.

• Back at School: Review vocabulary that surfaced throughout the exercises by breaking up scientific terms into component parts, introducing Latin roots that aid in recalling definitions. Some possibilities include: arboreal, nocturnal, diurnal, brachiation, frugivore, herbivore, omnivore.

Anderson, R. (1999). "Lemur catta". Animal Diversity Web. Retrieved on April 18, 2008, from http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Lemur_catta.html

Atsalis, S. (1998). Feeding Ecology and Aspects of Life History in Microcebus rufus (Family Cheirogaleidae). New York City: University of New York.

Cawthon Lang, KA (2005). "Primate Factsheets: Ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) Taxonomy, Morphology, & Ecology". Wisconsin Primate Research Center (WPRC). Retrieved on April 28, 2008, from http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/ring-tailed_lemur.

2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. (2006). Lemur catta listed as Vulnerable (VU A1c v2.3). The World Conservation Union. Retrieved on May 11, 2006, from http://staging/dawkins/teachers/admin/www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/redlist2006/redlist2006.html

Glander, K. (1981). Feeding patterns in mantled howling monkeys. pp. 231-257 in A. Kamil, T. Sargent, eds. Foraging Behavior. Ecological, ethological and psychological approaches. New York and London: Garland STPM Press.

Julien-Laferrière, D. (2002). Frugivory and seed dispersal by kinkajous. Monographiae Biologicae, 80: 217-225.

Kays, R. (2003). Social polyandry and promiscuous mating in a primate-like carnivore: the kinkajou (Potos flavus). pp. 125-137 in U. Reichard, C. Boesch, eds. Monogamy: mating strategies and partnerships in birds, humans and other mammals. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kays, R., and J. Gittleman. (2001). The social organization of the kinkajou Potos flavus (Procyonidae). Journal of Zoology, 253: 491-504.

Mittermeier, Russell, et al. (2006). Lemurs of Madagascar. 2nd edition. Colombia: Conservation International.

Powzyk, Joyce, and Urs Thalmann (2003). "Indri Indri, Indri", in Ed. Steven M. Goodman and Jonathan P. Benstead: The Natural History of Madagascar. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1342-1345.

Redford, K., A. MacLean Stearman, and J. Trager. (1989). The kinkajou (Potos flavus) as a myrmecophage. Mammalia, 53(1): 132-134.

Reid, F. (1997). A Field Guide to the Mammals of Central America and Southeast Mexico. Oxford University Press, Inc.

Grade Three

Life Sciences

• 3b. Students know examples of diverse life forms in different environments, such as oceans, deserts, tundra, forests, grasslands, and wetlands.

Grade Four

Life Sciences

• 3c. Students know many plants depend on animals for pollination and seed dispersal, and animals depend on plants for food and shelter.

Grade Six

Life Sciences

• 5c. Students know populations of organisms can be categorized by the functions they serve in an ecosystem.
• 5d. Students know different kinds of organisms may play similar ecological roles in similar biomes.

All over the world different species of organisms live in different habitats. Some habitats are similar to each other even though they are thousands of miles apart, like the deserts of North America and Africa or the rainforests of South America and Madagascar. Many organisms that live in these places have a history tied to their continent of origin, but share physical similarities and ecological roles with other organisms that reside in comparable habitats elsewhere. For instance, if we compare the rainforests of the Amazon basin in South America to the rainforests of the Congo basin in Africa, there are many similarities: hot, humid climate; high precipitation; diverse canopy structure; consistent yearly temperatures. Organisms inhabiting these environments are highly diverse, but are adapted to life in them after evolving with them for millions of years.

Regardless of the geographical home on an animal, all are influenced by the availability of resources: what is available to eat, how much water is accessible, and how much competition there is to get food, water, mates, and space. As animals adapt to their environments, they tend to fill separate ecological niches, which spreads the resources out in time, space, and season. A bird which feeds on insects on the bark of trees fulfills a separate niche than one which eats fruit in the canopy; both animals need not compete for resources, and in turn give back to the community (removing pests for plants, and dispersing seeds from fruit, respectively). Likewise, a nocturnal hunter takes advantage of a different playing field that a predator that hunts in the forest during the day.

In this activity, students will use clues from role-playing performances to compare and contrast the lifestyles of similar-looking animals. All six featured organisms are found in tropical and subtropical forest habitats, but they have different ecological niches. Some are diurnal, others nocturnal; some inhabit the canopy, and others move down to the forest floor. While all are mostly herbivorous, some specialize in fruit, and others in leaves. Three species of lemur found in Madagascar have been paired with three other animals that have a similar role, but in a different tropical forest of the world. The teacher’s worksheet describes each animal in full detail.