ENVC 424 - Applied Population and Community Ecology

Credits: 5
Variable Credit Course: No

Lecture Hours: 44
Lab Hours: 22
Worksite/Clinical Hours: 0
Other Hours (LIA/Internships): 0

Course Description: Introduction to the principles of population and community ecology, including population dynamics, species interactions, food webs, metapopulations and communities, ecological succession, and concepts of biological diversity.

Prerequisite: Admission to BASEC or Department Chair permission.
Meets FQE Requirement: No
Integrative Experience Requirement: No

Student Learning Outcomes

Identify major patterns of biological diversity and analyze potential explanations for those patterns.
Characterize how species interact with one another in ecological communities and examine how those interactions shape community composition, structure, and ecosystem functioning.
Investigate how distributions of populations in space (metapopulations) influence biodiversity at the regional level (metacommunities).
Quantify biological diversity and examine how it influences ecosystem functioning.
Describe how ecologists answer questions at the population and community level through the practice of science.
Apply and generalize fundamental ecological concepts to critical reading and analysis of primary scientific literature.

Course Contents

Population and ecosystem approaches in ecology.
Maintenance of species diversity and functional groups.
Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
Food webs, interaction webs, and ecosystem functioning.
Stability and complexity of ecosystems.
Material cycling and overall functioning of ecosystems.
Spatial dynamics of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
Metacommunities and metaecosystems.
Evolution of ecosystems and ecosystem properties.

Instructional Units: 5.5