Advanced Community Ecology

Undergraduate

This course will examine the various mechanisms structuring ecological communities of plants and animals. The course will consist of regular lectures, readings from the primary literature, and individual projects. Topics to be covered include simple two-species interactions (e.g. predation, competition, parasitism, mutualisms), simultaneous multispecies interactions, food web structure, regulation of species diversity on ecological and evolutionary time scales, community succession, and biogeography. Emphasis will be placed on the development of mathematical models and their relationship to empirical studies. Offered in alternate years.