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Advanced Ecology

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Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Foundation Core SHE2ED323 4

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Advanced Ecology will build on the basic introduction of ecology and ecosystems from the Ecology, Ecosystems and Biodiversity course (SHE2ED101), and address topics relating to ecosystem structure, function, and behaviour. A selection of topics associated with themes of core ecological research will be introduced to enable students to read, comprehend and potentially apply these concepts in their own areas of interest.

These topics are organised in four clusters that will be developed in greater detail with seminar presentations and classroom discussions of seminal and current research on ecological networks, ecosystem function, non-equilibrium ecological theory and conservation biology.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

The objective of this course is to introduce students to the debates and scholarship on select advanced topics in ecology focusing on ecosystem structure, function and knowledge gaps/challenges in ecology. This course is expected to equip graduate students interested in exploring research questions around ecology to familiarise themselves in the theoretical backdrop of frontier areas in ecology, to enable them to participate actively in exchanges with peer groups and to appreciate scholarship in Ecology.

It is expected that this course will enable students to articulate positions on the debates and engage with theory that will reflect in their final seminar paper that could be associated with any of the clusters but with the minimum rigour expected of a review of scholarship of the selected topic.

COURSE CONTENT

S. No.

Module

UNIT I

Trophic Interactions and Ecological Networks
  1.  

Food-Webs and Trophic Interactions
  1.  

Complex Systems and Ecological Networks
  1.  

Network Analysis

UNIT II

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function
  1.  

Biodiversity: Measurement
  1.  

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function
  1.  

Diversity and Stability

Unit III

Non-Equilibrium Ecology
  1.  

Equilibrium Models in Ecology
  1.  

Emergence of Non-Equilibrium Ideas
  1.  

Scaling Up: Transient Patches to Landscapes, State of Knowledge and Challenges

UNIT IV

Ecology and Conservation
  1.  

Extinction Crisis and the Conservation Ethic
  1.  

Conservation Biology in Practice
  1.  

Deep Ecology: How Deep is It?

INDICATIVE READING LIST

  • Bascompte, J., & Jordano, P. (2007). Plant-Animal Mutualistic Networks: The Architecture of Biodiversity. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 38, 567-593.
  • Bascompte, J., Jordano, P., & Olesen, J. M. (2006). Asymmetric coevolutionary networks facilitate biodiversity maintenance. Science, 312(5772), 431-433.
  • Lusseau, D., Schneider, K., Boisseau, O. J., Haase, P., Slooten, E., & Dawson, S. M. (2003). The bottlenose dolphin community of Doubtful Sound features a large proportion of long- lasting associations. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 54(4), 396-405.
  • May, R. M. (1983). Ecology: The structure of food webs. Nature, 301, 566-568.
  • May, R. M., Levin, S. A., & Sugihara, G. (2008). Complex systems: Ecology for bankers.
  • Nature, i(7181), 893-895.
  • Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in Systems: A Primer. D. Wright (Ed.). White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Pub.
  • Paine, R. T. (1966). Food Web Complexity and Species Diversity. The American Naturalist, 100(910), 65-75.
  • Paine, R. T. (1980). Food Webs: Linkage, Interaction Strength and Community Infrastructure. The Journal of Animal Ecology, 49(3), 666-685.
  • Pascual, M., & Dunne, J. A. (Eds.). (2005). Ecological Networks: Linking Structure to Dynamics in Food Webs. Oxford University Press.
  • Pimm, S. L., & Lawton, J. H. (1978). On feeding on more than one trophic level. Nature, 275, 542-544.
  • Pimm, S. L., Lawton, J. H., & Cohen, J. E. (1991). Food web patterns and their consequences. Nature, 350, 669-674.
  • Sole, R. V., & Montoya, J. M. (2001). Complexity and fragility in ecological networks. Pro- ceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 268(1480), 2039-2045.
  • Sugihara, G., & Ye, H. (2009). Cooperative network dynamics. Nature, 458, 979-980.
  • Thebault, E., & Fontaine, C. (2010). Stability of ecological communities and the architecture of mutualistic and trophic networks. Science, 329(5993), 853-856.
  • Thompson, J. N. (2006). Mutualistic webs of species. Science, 312(5772), 372-373.
  • Winemiller, K. O. (1990). Spatial and temporal variation in tropical fish trophic networks. Ecological Monographs, 60(3), 331-367.

ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY

Five assessments in all, with four assessments (15% each) associated with each cluster respectively and one final submission/seminar of 40% on the literature review of a select topic.

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