BIOS 6150: ECOLOGY - Spring 2015 Syllabus
Dr Stephen B. Malcolm
Department of Biological Sciences, Western Michigan University.
3151 Wood Hall, tel.: 387-5604, fax: 387-5609, E-mail: steve.malcolm@wmich.edu
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~malcolm/BIOS6150-Ecology/6150index.html
Room 1106 Wood Hall, Monday, Wednesday, 2:00 – 3:15 p.m.
Office hours: Monday, Wednesday: 1 – 2 & 4 - 5 p.m., or by appointment
Week Date
I.
1.
II.
2.
2.
3.
4.
III.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
IV.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Topic
Text
INTRODUCTION
Jan. 12/14
Introduction to ECOLOGY
Ch 1-3
SINGLE-SPECIES POPULATIONS
Jan.
19
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Jan.
21
Defining Populations: Birth, Death & Movement
Ch 4 & 6
Jan. 26/28
Intraspecific Competition & Populus Introduction
Ch 5
Feb.
2/4
The Logistic Equation and population modelling
Ch 5
INTERSPECIFIC INTERACTIONS
Feb. 9/11
Interspecific Competition
Ch 8
Feb. 16/18
Predation and Predatory Behavior
Ch 9
Feb. 23/25
Dynamics of Predation
Ch 10
Mar.
2/4
Parasitism and Herbivory
Ch 12
(Take-Home Mid-Term Exam available 2 March - Weeks 1-8)
[SPRING BREAK, 9-13 March]
Mar. 16/18
Decomposers, Detritivores & Mutualists
Ch 11 & 13
(Take-Home Mid-Term Exam due 18 March)
SYNTHESES & APPLICATIONS OF POPULATION ECOLOGY
Mar. 23/25
Life History Variation (Paper draft due, 23 March) Ch 4 & 14
Mar.30/Ap1 Abundance & Metapopulations
Ch 6 & 14
Apr.
6/8
Manipulating Abundance & Risk Assessment,
Ch 15
Apr. 13/15
Community Structure (Term Paper due, 15 April)
Ch 16 & 20-22
Apr. 20/22
Roles of Competition, Predation & Disturbance
Ch 19
Apr.
30
BIOS 6150: Ecology
(Take-Home Final Exam available 20 April - Weeks 1-14)
Take-Home Final Exam due by 4:45 p.m.
Stephen Malcolm
page - 1
BIOS 6150: ECOLOGY
Spring 2015 Syllabus
Course Description:
“The structure and dynamics of plant and animal populations are considered with critical
evaluations of current concepts. Emphases include the relative roles of competition and
trophic interactions in population dynamics and how communities are structured.
Applications of ecological concepts will consider aspects of conservation biology, pest
control, agroecosystem function, and risks of genetic engineering.”
Prerequisite: A course in Ecology or consent of instructor.
Course Rationale: BIOS 6150 – Ecology is a graduate core course for both the Master
of Science in Biological Sciences and the Doctor of Philosophy in Biological Sciences.
Course Objective and Outcomes:
Objective:
To appreciate how the science of ecology is used to describe the distributions and
abundances of organisms through deductive research on the dynamics of biological
interactions at different scales of time and space, from molecules to collected
ecosystems.
Expected Outcomes:
You should be able to,
(1) Demonstrate knowledge of ecological processes and examples.
(2) Comprehend theories about how organisms interact.
(3) Apply ecological principles to biological problems.
(4) Use ecological models in the analysis of biological problems.
(5) Synthesize and evaluate biological problems from an ecological perspective.
INTRODUCTION
As you know this course in ecology is part of the graduate core curriculum in the
Department of Biological Sciences and is designed to reflect the historical background
to population ecology, the dominant theoretical themes, as well as recent developments
BIOS 6150: Ecology
Stephen Malcolm
page - 2
in theory and application. The emphasis is on population ecology and its interface with
community ecology.
Although we will touch on how populations influence community structure, the
primary focus of the course will be on Population Ecology. Of course, ecology
encompasses the study of how organisms interact with their "home" or "oikos", which as
you know reflects their "niche", and we can study these interactions at any level of
organization from individuals, through populations, communities and ecosystems, to
landscapes and biomes. Arguably, for most ecologists the population level of
organization, with its inherent variability, is the level that most of us study whether or not
we want to understand the ecologies of any of the changing scales of organization from
individuals to biomes. Thus population ecology has become central to much of
ecological theory and practice and it is at the population level that ecologists have tried
hardest to understand the processes that structure observed patterns of interaction.
Moreover, population ecology is becoming increasingly important in biomedical
applications because it provides some valuable epidemiological, behavioral and
dynamical tools for understanding molecular and cellular interactions as well as those
between microparasitic diseases and their hosts (e.g. viral, bacterial, protozoan, fungal
diseases etc.).
Pattern and process are the lifeblood of ecology and it is through our efforts to
understand the processes that structure observed patterns of distribution and
abundance of organisms that the science of ecology advances.
COURSE THEME
As long ago as 1798 the British political economist Thomas Robert Malthus
realized that human populations were increasing exponentially through logarithmic or
geometric progression in the absence of any apparent checks to growth. Forty years
later in 1838, the Belgian mathematician Pierre-François Verhulst was the first to
describe mathematically a sigmoid curve for population growth that was constrained to
an asymptote. This curve he called the "logistique" as opposed to the "logarithmique" of
Malthus. However, Malthus was also aware of the logistic relationship in his "principle
of population" and so this curve is perhaps best described as the "Malthus-Verhulst
logistic equation" (Berryman, 1992).
Although largely ignored for more than 80 years this logistic curve became a
central theme throughout ecology, once the Americans, Pearl and Reed resurrected the
logistic formula in 1920 (Kingsland, 1991). Raymond Pearl was a statistician and he
also called this relationship the "logistic curve" which is described by the differential
equation,
dN/dt = rN[(K-N)/K] .... the same as dN/dt = rN(1-N/K),
in which:
BIOS 6150: Ecology
Stephen Malcolm
page - 3
N
t
r
K
=
=
=
=
the number of individuals in the population,
time,
the intrinsic rate of natural increase, and
the upper limit of population growth (the "carrying capacity").
The logistic relationship was used particularly extensively by fisheries biologists
who developed population models to manage fish harvests and in some texts and
papers the logistic is also called the Verhulst-Pearl equation to reflect its pedigree.
In addition to these single species uses, the logistic equation has also been used
to describe interactions between two species. The Italian physicist Vito Volterra used
the logistic in 1926 to model interspecific competition. He also modeled prey-predator
interactions, but with a “mass-action” approach, and this work was mirrored at the same
time in the USA by Alfred Lotka, a mathematician and demographer. Thus this twospecies model of predation is now known as the Lotka-Volterra predation model and
provides a starting point for most considerations of predation, and despite the fact that
this is not a logistic model it is simple to add a self-limiting, logistic term to the model.
Although Lotka did not work on competitive interactions to the same extent as Volterra
(Kingsland, 1991), the logistic model of interspecific competition is also widely known as
the Lotka-Volterra competition model.
Many well known researchers have built on this foundation and we will examine a
variety of these contributions throughout our course. As the course develops you will be
given reading lists that will direct you to the classical primary literature as well as to
some very recent developments and applications of basic theory in population ecology.
The course text will be Begon, Townsend and Harper (2006) which is also the text I use
for
the
undergraduate
course,
BIOS
3010:
Ecology
(see
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405111178.html). In my opinion
this is the best ecology text available and although it is somewhat advanced for an
undergraduate course, it has sufficient depth to provide a great basis for a graduate
course.
Course Texts
Begon, M., C.R. Townsend and J.L. Harper. 2006. Ecology: From individuals to
ecosystems. 4th Edition. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 738 pp. (required)
Alstad, D. 2001. Basic Populus Models of Ecology. Prentice Hall, 144 pp. (optional)
Literature Cited
Begon, M., J.L. Harper & C.R. Townsend. 1996. Ecology: Individuals, Populations and
Communities. 3rd Edition. Blackwell Science, Oxford, 1068 pp.
BIOS 6150: Ecology
Stephen Malcolm
page - 4
Begon, M., M. Mortimer, & D.J. Thompson. 1996. Population Ecology: A unified study of
animals and plants. Third Edition. Blackwell Science: Oxford, 247 pp.
Berryman, A.A. 1992. The origins and evolution of predator-prey theory. Ecology 73(5):
1530-1535.
Kingsland, S.E. 1991. Defining ecology as a science. Pages 1-13, In, L.A. Real & J.H.
Brown (editors), Foundations of Ecology: Classic Papers with
Commentaries. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 905 pp.
Royama, T. 1992. Analytical Population Dynamics. Chapman & Hall, London, 371 pp.
COURSE ORGANIZATION
Classes meet from 2:00 to 3:15 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays each week.
All classes will meet in room 1106 Wood Hall – the ecology teaching laboratory. We will
meet in the ecology laboratory so that we can explore ecological concepts in more
depth with hands-on computer simulations of many of the models we will discuss.
These considerations will not be strongly mathematical and we will try to keep the
computer labs as helpful and comprehensible as possible. The computers (all Macs
used in PC mode) will be used as an interesting and entertaining means of
understanding mathematical descriptions of ecological interactions. The software we
will use is called "Populus: Simulations of Population Biology" and was developed by
Don Alstad at the University of Minnesota (Alstad, 2001). This software development
was funded by the National Science Foundation and so the program is free for
educational use. Thus "Populus" is available in the lab and as downloadable software
from the University of Minnesota Ecology and Evolutionary Biology server at
http://www.cbs.umn.edu/populus/.
Each Monday class will be a lecture and each Wednesday class will explore that
week’s ideas in various ways through simulations, models, discussion and
presentations. Each student will give a presentation based on an assigned paper.
Thus each week will be divided approximately into thirds: lecture + presentation +
computer simulation.
(1) Lecture: Steve Malcolm will summarize the relevant text chapter each week and
supplement this with notes and additional literature. Each class participant should
also read the assigned text chapter or any assigned papers as preparation for each
class session.
(2) Presentation: Each participant will be assigned a paper to present that is relevant
to the session topic. Everyone in class must read this paper and submit a summary
(half a page to one page in length) of its most relevant points (include purpose,
BIOS 6150: Ecology
Stephen Malcolm
page - 5
validity of methods, results and analyses, and value of the conclusions) by the start
of the relevant class. The assigned paper presenter will spend 20 minutes
describing the paper with the use of MS PowerPointTM and photocopied handout
given to each class member (it is suggested that you do this in much the same way
as the lecture will be presented). The presenter must explain the paper and
comment on its conceptual and methodological value as well as its relevance to the
overall session topic. This presentation must be designed to stimulate discussion
among class participants and the presenter should try to encourage participation.
Points (as specified below) will be awarded to both the presenter and all class
participants for the weekly summaries. The relevant papers will be made available
in the classroom (1106 Wood Hall)).
Grading rubric for presentations is as follows:
Class presentations of assigned papers will be graded on the basis of 8 criteria,
worth 10 to 20 points each for a total score out of 100. The 8 criteria are:
(1) Overall presentation - general overview
20 points
(2) Content of the presentation - accuracy and depth of communication
10 points
(3) Handout - quality of handout given to the class as a summary
10 points
(4) Understanding - relative level of appreciation for the material
10 points
(5) Clarity of presentation - ability to communicate the material clearly
10 points
(6) Stimulate questions - ability to generate discussion about the paper
10 points
(7) Handle questions - ability to explain the material
10 points
(8) Other material - use of other relevant papers, visual or other aids
20 points
Total 100
points
(3) Computer simulations: These will use the Populus program to explore the models
and concepts most relevant to Population Ecology. We will also use the program's
"interaction engine" to build our own models to examine ideas that are not covered
by the text. The results of assigned computer exercises will be assessed as
specified during the course. Questions asked on printed handouts during these
sessions should be handed in for evaluation based on your work with Populus.
BIOS 6150: Ecology
Stephen Malcolm
page - 6
(4) Review Paper: The course also requires that each participant must submit a review
paper relevant the course theme of the logistic equation. This paper should follow
the style and content of papers in the journal Ecology (published by the Ecological
Society of America http://www.esa.org/) and it should be single spaced, 12pt font
(either Times/Times Roman or Helvetica/Arial) and at least 10 pages long,
excluding the Literature Cited and any tables and figures and their legends that you
may use (see http://esapubs.org/esapubs/AuthorInstructions.htm for Instructions to
Authors). This review paper must be handed in for review no later than
Wednesday, 23 March 2015. Of course you are very welcome to hand it in earlier
and I strongly encourage you to discuss the structure and content of your paper
with me. I will then provide you with my review and recommendation as to whether
it should be accepted or revised. Based on this review you should then revise your
paper and resubmit it by Wednesday, 15 April 2015 as your final submission.
This paper will be marked critically as though you were submitting it for publication.
As a former editor of an international journal I will use the same criteria for judging
your paper. It should be readable, grammatically correct (also use a spelling
checker) and must be word-processed. The source of figures used must be fully
acknowledged and plagiarism must be avoided absolutely (any evidence of
plagiarism will result in a score of zero). You may make this review very general
with an emphasis on history, or mathematics, or biological concepts; or you may
focus on a single problem or phenomenon.
For example, if you have a biomedical interest you may wish to compare the use of
the Michaelis-Menten-Holling equation for the description of enzyme kinetics with its
use to describe the foraging behavior of predators, parasites or herbivores, and
subsequent incorporation into the logistic relationship. Or you may wish to focus on
the disease dynamics of HIV infections, or the dynamics of medfly populations in
California, or how to describe whale populations, or the dynamics of harvested fish
populations, or model moose-wolf interactions on Isle Royale, or lynx-grouse-hare
interactions in Northern Canada, or assess the impact of Bt corn pollen on monarch
butterfly populations in the field, or discuss whether populations actually show
density-dependent, logistic limitation, etc.
Citations and sources of information should focus on primary sources and must be
cited as having been read (do not cite sources that you have not seen). Secondary
and tertiary sources (e.g. web or magazine sources) may be used but must not
predominate.
BIOS 6150: Ecology
Stephen Malcolm
page - 7
Grading rubric for the review paper is as follows:
First
Criterion
submission
(1) Content and presentation (general overview)
20 points
(2) Structure (hypotheses, logic of organization,
30 points
significance of argument)
(3) Interest (use of sources, innovative arguments, use
20 points
of figures)
(4) Relevance of topic to the logistic equation
20 points
(5) References
10 points
Total 100 points
Final
submission
20 points
30 points
20 points
20 points
10 points
100 points
PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT:
Performance in the course will be measured as indicated below:
(1) Paper presentation
(2) Paper summaries
(3) Take-home mid-term exam
(4) Computer session questions
(5) Review paper
(6) Take-home final exam
Grading scale:
A = >90%
B = >80%
C = >70%
D = >60%
(10 at 10 points each)
(due 11 March 2013)
(due 20 March & 10 April 2013)
(due 22 April 2013)
points
100
100
100
100
200
200
TOTAL 800
BA = >85%
CB = >75%
DC = >65%
E = <60%
Students with Special Needs:
Students with disabilities or other special needs who need special
accommodations in this course are invited to share these concerns or requests
with the instructor as soon as possible.
Academic Honesty
You are responsible for making yourself aware of and understanding the policies
and procedures in the Graduate Catalog that pertain to Academic Honesty.
These policies include cheating, fabrication, falsification and forgery, multiple
submission, plagiarism, complicity and computer misuse. If there is reason to
BIOS 6150: Ecology
Stephen Malcolm
page - 8
believe you have been involved in academic dishonesty, you will be referred to
the Office of Student Conduct. You will be given the opportunity to review the
charge(s). If you believe you are not responsible, you will have the opportunity for
a hearing. You should consult with me if you are uncertain about an issue of
academic honesty prior to the submission of an assignment or test.
BIOS 6150: Ecology
Stephen Malcolm
page - 9