Principles of Ecology

3 Units

This lecture course explores spatial and temporal relationships involving organisms and the environment at individual, population, and community levels. An underlying theme of the course will be neo-Darwinian evolution through natural selection with an emphasis on organismal adaptations to abiotic and biotic environments. Studies and models will illustrate ecological principles, and there will be some emphasis on the applicability of these principles to ecosystem conservation. This course satisfies the Population Biology/Ecology breadth requirement of the B.A. and B.S. in Biology. Students taking the graduate level course will prepare a grant proposal in which hypotheses will be based on some aspect of ecological theory. Offered as BIOL 351 and BIOL 451 . Prereq: Graduate student standing.