Field Guide of Discovery-based Exercises for - Aseanipm ...

Section 4 • Integrated Insect and Rodent Pests Management
5 Presence of runways, burrows, footprints, and feces; and
5 Management strategies employed by farmers, if any.
2. Go back to processing area; brainstorm in small groups and present output to the big group.
3. Conduct participatory discussion to allow sharing of experiences among participants and
facilitators. Motivate farmers to share how they can use population dynamics information to
design management strategies against rodents in their organic vegetable fields.
4. Synthesize and summarize output of small groups into one big group output. Draw up
conclusions and recommendations from this exercise.
5. Facilitate farmers to do simulation exercises on estimating rodent population growth over a
period of one year in their own vegetable fields by improving the procedure given below:
5 On a Manila paper, draw 12 lines to divide into 13 sections;
5 On first section, place two seeds; one seed to represent a female rodent and another to
represent a male rodent;
5 Move to 1 st month. Add six seeds for six offsprings from an original pair of rodents, three
rodents are females and three rodents are males;
5 Move to 4 th month. Add six seeds for six offsprings from an original female, then add 18
seeds for three females in the 1 st month (e.g., three females x six offsprings each). Half of
seeds represent female rodents;
5 Move to 7 th month. Add six seeds for six offsprings from an original female, then add 18
seeds in 1 st month (e.g., three females x six offsprings each). Add 72 (e.g., 12 females with
6 offsprings each) for offsprings from females in 4 th month, half of the seeds represent
female rodents;
5 Continue this process for the 10 th and 13 th months; and
5 Write on a Manila paper the total numbers of rodents for each month, and a cumulative
total from month to month.
some suggested questions for processing discussion
❏ How many rodents are produced in one year (e.g., one section is three months)?
❏ If half of the rodents are killed on the 7 th month, how many rodents will be produced by end of
12 th month?
❏ If there are 10 million female rodents in the first month, how many rodents will be produced on
the 13 th month? If you organized a rodent management campaign and killed these many rodents,
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