University of Louisiana
P.O. Box 42451
University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Dept. of Biology
Lafayette, LA 70504
Mark Konikoff University of Louisiana
COSEE Role:
COSEE Scientist
Primary COSEE Affiliation:
Other affiliations:
- Gulf of Mexico
Interaction with COSEE Network:
Mark Konikoff is an Associate Professor of Biology at University Louisiana in Lafayette. Mark conducted his graduate work at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. His area of expertise is fishery biology. He has taught fishery courses at ULL since 1973, including Limnology, Ichthyology, Fishery Science, and Aquaculture. In addition, Mark taught Sociobiology (evolution of behavior with emphasis on social behaviors) since 1985. He has conducted research on projects varying from cage culture of fishes in Nigerian Lakes and in Arkansas ponds to crawfish in the Atchafalaya Basin of Louisiana and ecology of estuarine fishes on the western marshy coast of Louisiana. Mark is currently working on an oyster paper with one collaborator, and on a management plan for the Louisiana wild-caught crawfish fishery with another. He has participated in two COSEE Summer Institutes in LA and finds them to be a wonderful opportunity to interact with teachers. Last year one teacher and Mark made a presentation (based on our summer project) at the Louisiana Science Teachers Association meeting. This summer, in addition to the two research projects and COSEE, Mark will be going to Kansas City for nine days to grade biology AP tests for the Educational Testing Service. Since most science uses mathematics and statistics, Mark likes the idea of integrating these into a marine biology project. This year Mark hopes we can measure the diversity of organisms (preferably fishes) in two habits and compare the two. One of the benefits of measuring diversity is that it can be done by students who have not yet learned to identify the species or memorize their names. Students merely have to count the number of species and the numbers of individuals in each group. The actual names of the species can be determined and learned after the students are familiar with them.
