The course covers two main themes. The first is the presentation of basic scientific knowledge in ecology. The second theme is the application of knowledge to the task of environmental conservation. Students will learn how to apply current knowledge to topical issues and how to adapt that knowledge to solving emerging new problems that may be confronted in the future.

The course will give students a fundamental mechanistic understanding about the way biotic (e.g., resources, competitors, predators) and abiotic (e.g., climate) determine pattern in the distribution and abundance of species. Students will learn how individuals within a species cope with changing environmental conditions by altering their behavior, by making physiological adjustments and changing the allocation of resources among survival growth and reproduction. Students will learn how to scale this mechanistic detail to the level of population demography in order to understand the consequences for long-term population viability. Populations of species coexist within communities and species interactions within communities can lead to highly complex and nonlinear dynamics. Students will gain an appreciation for the way effects of perturbations propagate within food webs. They will also begin to appreciate and learn to forecast the myriad direct and indirect effects that can be realized following perturbations. Students will then be shown how ecologists use this scientific insight to deal with emerging environmental problems such as protecting biodiversity, understanding the consequences of habitat loss on species diversity, forecasting the effects of global climate change on species population viability and geographic distribution.

Evaluation

2 Term Exams (60%), Term paper (40%)

Lecture Topics
 

Week of:	Monday	Wednesday	Friday	Problem Theme
Sept. 02		Introduction to course	What is Ecology?
Sept. 9	What is Science?	Application of Scientific Knowledge to the policy Process	Principles of Evolution and Fitness	Introduction to concepts
Sept. 16	Climate and Life	Physiology and Physiological Tolerance	Assessing Impacts of Global Climate Change	Global warming
Sept. 23	Habitat Selection Behavioral ecology, trade-offs and maximizing fitness	Empirical examples of habitat selection	Habitat fragmentation and habitat loss: implications for conservation	Habitat destruction
Sept. 23	Population Ecology: equilibrium, carrying capacity, MSY, chaos	Ecological Determinants of Carrying Capacity	Human and Wildlife Population Management: technological limits	Carrying Capacity and  Overpopulation
October 7	Growth of Age/Stage Structured Populations	Viability Analysis: Sea Turtles and Pandas	Source-Sink Dynamics:  Spotted Owls	Structured Populations and Conservation
October 14	Disease Ecology	Dealing with Epidemics and emergent diseases	Exam:	Diseases and Policy
October 21	Basic community ecology: predator-prey, and competition and the balance of nature	Resource partitioning and predators: the diversification of life	Rivet and Redundancy hypothesis of biodiversity	Species diversity
October 28	Species Interactions in food webs: direct and indirect effects and time-scales	Keystones, mesacarnivores and other stories	Biological Control in Simple and Complex Systems	Complexity
Nov. 4	Ecosystem Services of Biodiversity	Perturbation and recovery of Ecosystem services	Biodiversity and the stability of Ecosystems	Diversity/Stability
Nov. 11	Invasive Species ? traits and ecological effects	Biotic Invasions and risks to ecosystem structure and function	Restoration Ecology	Exotics and Restoration of degraded ecosystems
Nov. 18	Biogeography and species area curves	Landscape scale patterns of biodiversity hotspots and critical areas	Bioreserves, Protected areas and representative areas	Preserving ecological systems
Nov 25	Thanksgiving Break
December 2	Concluding remarks	Term Exam 2.