Ecology

Why do plants and animals occur where they do? Why these specific plants and animals, in these combinations and abundances? What will happen to them in the future? These are the big questions ecology addresses. This course will focus on quantifying how interactions between individuals and their environment shape populations, and how populations of one species are, in turn, affected by other species. The core principles governing ecological interactions are universal, applying at scales ranging from the microscopic (e.g., bacteria and viruses) to those of ecosystems surrounding us. They play out over timescales ranging from minutes to millions of years. They apply to both natural and managed environments. By understanding and quantifying ecological interaction we can make models describing the past and predicting what will happen in the future. This way of thinking is particularly valuable today, as human behaviour drives the ecology around us, and we need to forecast the consequences of our actions. This course will take a hands-on data-driven approach, with field trips, workshops and discussions focused on illustrating key ecological concepts. We will leverage the power of the R programming language to visualise data, whether empirical, or simulated by our mathematical models. One course highlight is a three-day field trip to the Kioloa Coastal Campus, that will allow you to design, carry out and analyse a small ecological study.. Note: Graduate students attend joint classes with undergraduates but are assessed separately.