Theoretical Ecology

Catalog description

Offered intermittently. This class provides a general toolbox of ecological modeling approaches. It will be more about how to model than about models themselves, but in illustration we will cover a variety of commonly used ecological and evolutionary models, ranging from behavior of individuals (optimality, game theory) to populations (structured and unstructured, logistic growth, matrix models) to communities (competition, predation, parasitism). The focus will be on formalizing conceptual ideas into a mathematical framework and will not deal heavily with data. (Of course, data is important, but other courses here concentrate on data and model fitting.) Most weeks, sessions will each cover a new theoretical model, including derivation of the equations from ecological theory, and students will complete an assignment that includes coding the model in R and exploring its dynamics. Other sessions will be discussion of a journal article that includes the model(s), so students can become comfortable with seeing and comprehending mathematical notation and theoretical literature. The course will culminate with a project in which students will design a model for some aspect of their study system that could potentially be published.