Fresh-faced researchers swarm around Deborah Lucas, buzzing with enthusiasm and frustration. They have gathered to appraise terrarium-style models of a local pond ecosystem that groups of two or three have painstakingly assembled in large jars. Lucas leads a discussion that includes how to determine the causes of unanticipated die-offs of plants and animals in some jars, what hypotheses to test in sustainable models, the usefulness of quantitative measures of plant growth devised by some teams, and the extent to which each model corresponds to an actual pond ecosystem.
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