Marine Ecology

Catalog description

The goals of the course are to provide (a) an introduction to the major marine habitats, and (b) provide a strong foundation in the ecological processes that control tropical and subtropical marine ecosystems. We will survey the various habitats of marine ecosystems, focusing on organisms that are characteristic of each habitat and the processes that control the abundance and distribution of those organisms. The course will introduce many of the major marine habitats, but the course will focus on tropical carbonate systems (coral reefs). In our treatment of these ecosystems we will emphasize a hypothesis-testing approach, and we will rely heavily on the primary literature for examples used in class.