1. Fundamentals of Ecology
Biology/Ecology/ENST 112

2. What? Second course in ecology, follows 54
New course – work in progress
Basic ideas and concepts
Skills and experiences
You have an opportunity to influence the content!

3. Who? Robert Peet Lee Anne Jacobs Brooke Wheeler
Advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students
2 sophomores, 8 juniors, 16 seniors, 6 graduate students

4. Why are you here? Need a 100-level elective? The course is required?
Wish stronger background for research?
Interested in a career in ecology?
Wish to be an informed citizen?

5. A guided tour of the website
Syllabus
Lecture outlines, PowerPoints, readings
Laboratory materials
Resources
Roster
Gradebook
Exams
Announcements

6. Grades 20% Exam 1 20% Exam 2 20% Final Exam 20% Laboratory
20% Two written assignments

7. Lecture organization Physical environment & physiological ecology
Ecosystems
Populations
Population interactions
Communities
Macroecology

8. Texts and Readings Begon, Townsend & Harper 2006 Gotelli 2001
Suggested chapters
Required sections
Gotelli 2001
Original papers for Case Studies
Example papers – old and new

9. Laboratory Field experience Skills & tools Quantitative methods
Issues:
Computers
Fieldtrips

10. What is Ecology
Haeckel "the study of all the complex interrelationships referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existence, or the economy of nature."
Ecology is the scientific study of the interrelationships between organisms, and between organisms and their environment
Ecology is the sociology and economics of animals and plants

11. Role of Ecology Understanding nature Managing nature
"The ecological theater and the evolutionary play."
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.“
very little about evolution makes sense except in the light of ecology."
Managing nature

12. Ecology as a science
“… ecology is a science of contingent generalizations, where future trends depend (much more than in the physical sciences) on past history and on the environmental and biological setting.” Robert May – 1986

13. Ecology as a science
Biology is a study of diversity, be it at the level of species or of molecules
There are endless special cases
Ecology and Evolution are more uncertain, and thus more challenging than many areas of science.
you cannot deduce biology from first principles.
What is noise to a physicist is music to a biologist.

14. Scientific process Observation and description Patterns and hypothesis
Tests and revision
Explanation and understanding
Prediction and extrapolation
Control
Complexity and case studies

15. Levels of organization
Organisms
Populations
Communities
Landscapes
The Biosphere
Ecosystem perspectives
Scale perspectives