PREREQUISITE:

BIO101 - General Biology I

COREQUISITE:

ENG101 - English Composition or equivalent

 

REQUIRED TEXTBOOK:

Ecology: Concepts and Applications by Manuel C. Molles, Jr. Publisher: McGraw Hill

ISBN: 978-0-07-338322-4

REQUIRED MATERIALS:  

Safety glasses are required for all on-campus sections.

As the result of instructional activities, students will be able to:

Introduction - What is Ecology?

• Define ecology.
• State the kinds of things that ecologists study.
• Explain the concepts of individuals, populations, communities, and ecosystems.

Individuals

• Describe strategies that individuals have for dealing with extremes in temperature, and scarcity of water, energy, and nutrients.
• Explain why some kinds of animals live in groups and exhibit cooperative behavior.

Populations

• Explain how gene frequencies change in populations.
• Explain the Hardy-Weinberg principle and list the assumptions of the principle.
• Tell how populations are distributed in nature and tell what causes these patterns of distribution.
• Calculate basic life table information.
• Describe exponential and logistic growth and explain the factors that limit population growth.
• Explain how life history strategies relate to the environment of an organism.

Interactions

• Give examples of inter-specific and intra-pecific competition.
• Explain how niche overlap results in competition.
• Explain the concept of the niche as an n-dimensional hypervolume.
• Write the Lotka-Volterra competition equations and explain the meaning of each term.
• Predict the outcome of competition if the relative importance of alpha12, alpha21, K1, and K2 are known.
• Discuss examples of competition experiments done in the lab and in the field.
• Explain the concept of character displacement.
• Discuss examples of studies on parasitism, herbivory, and competition.
• Use the graphical explanation of the Lotka-Volterra competition equations.
• Use the Rosenzweig and MacArthur model to explain why predator-prey communities may be stable, unstable, or cyclic.
• List examples of refuges for prey.
• Describe several kinds of mutualism, stating what each partner gives and receives as a result of the interaction.

Communities and Ecosystems

• Describe the expected distribution of species abundance in a community.
• Define species diversity.
• Calculate species diversity using the Shannon-Weiner index.
• Describe the relationship between habitat complexity and species diversity.
• Describe the relationship between disturbance and species diversity.
• Explain how keystone species affect community structure.
• Explain how exotic predators can affect a food web.
• Distinguish between gross and net primary production and explain why one is always less than the other.
• Name and describe the trophic levels that occur within a community.
• State what limits terrestrial primary production.
• State what limits aquatic primary production.
• Describe a trophic cascade and give an example.
• Explain what limits the number of trophic levels in a community.
• Describe the role of decomposition in nutrient cycles.
• List factors that influence the rate of decomposition and explain how they affect the rate.
• Explain the affect of disturbance on nutrient loss from a community.
• Describe what happens during succession.
• Explain the facilitation, tolerance and inhibition models of succession.
• List factors that may affect community stability.

Global Ecology

• Predict the relative abundance of species on islands using the Equilibrium Model of Island Biogeography.
• Explain how the El Nino Southern Oscillation influences global climate and describe its impact on communities and ecosystems.
• Describe the history of deforestation and explain it’s consequences on communities and ecosystems.
• Explain how humans have modified the nitrogen cycle.
• Describe the history of the changes in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and discuss the evidence for the changes.
• Explain the greenhouse effect.

Laboratory Objectives

As the result of laboratory activities, students will be able to:

1. demonstrate the use of sampling techniques for estimating population sizes of the following kinds of organisms:
2. Animals
3. Trees or large stationary species
4. Herbs or small stationary species
5. measure the variation in some characteristic of a species and answer questions about the impact of natural selection on this characteristic.
6. use a model population to answer questions about population genetics and the Hardy-Weinberg law.
7. use computer software to simulate population growth and answer questions about population growth.
8. measure species diversity and dispersion of a plant community and use their measurements to answer questions about the community.
9. create a lifetable and use the lifetable to answer questions about the species life history.

GENERAL TOPICS OUTLINE:

1. Cell Structure, Microbial Structure and Growth
2. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
3. Infectious agents
4. Immunology
5. Disease control
6. Epidemiology
7. Biotechnology
8. Environmental Microbiology

Feel free to contact a member of the Science Department or the Science Department Chair.