Document Type

Syllabus

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Course Description

This course explores our incredible, diverse biological world from ecological and evolutionary perspectives and will provide you with a foundation of major concepts in ecology and evolution that underpin a basis of understanding for upper-level classes in Biology. We will be covering three sections: evolution, ecology, and biodiversity. In section 1, we will be exploring Darwin’s Big Idea: adaptive evolution via the mechanism of Natural Selection, with a particular emphasis on population and quantitative genetics, and phylogenetics. In the words of Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts, some of them interesting or curious, but making no meaningful picture as a whole.” In section 2, we will investigate how organisms interact with each other and their environment (a.k.a., ecology!). We will be asking questions such as “how do organisms choose their mates,” “how prey avoid being eaten,” “is biodiversity simply a pattern, or do diverse communities function differently.” In ecology, we will be crossing broad temporal and spatial scales: from the number and distribution of individuals in a population to the cycling of matter through entire ecosystems. Section 3 will round up the themes of evolution and ecology in biodiversity - investigating how new species form and how we discern evolutionary relationships between groups. We will also examine the nuts and bolts of evolution—including mechanisms unknown in Darwin’s time.

Student Outcomes

At the end of the semester, you should be able to:
1. Explain and compare various methods of inquiry that lead to ecological, evolutionary, and organismal knowledge and discuss the role of humans in the natural world.
2. Organize, analyze, and interpret several kinds of quantitative data and biological information:

  • Produce, read, and interpret graphical representations of data.
  • Design, carry out and report on hypothesis-driven studies.
  • Justify experimental conclusions based on observations, evidence, and data analysis.

3. Gain & retain important knowledge about evolutionary biology & ecology:

  • Explain the theory of evolution by natural selection.
  • Describe relationships between structure and function of biological adaptations.
  • Interpret depictions of phylogenetic relationships.
  • Apply the basic rules of Mendelian genetics and inheritance.
  • Demonstrate knowledge of population, community, and ecosystem structure and function.

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