Biology Integration: From Organisms to Landscapes.

Catalog description

Semester course; 3 lecture hours. 3 credits. Prerequisite: BIOL 631 . Enrollment is restricted to students with graduate standing that have completed at least a minor in biology or equivalent. This course will expose students to the recent advances in the biology subdisciplines that span from organisms to landscapes by examining how the spatial patterns of organisms, populations, communities and landscapes impact ecological processes. Students will focus on understanding experimental approaches and practical applications critical to evaluate research in evolutionary biology and the ecology subdisciplines. The course will also highlight the impact of human activities on the global environment. The course is the second of two courses with the goal of equipping the students with the conceptual framework that will allow them to make sense and integrate the broad biological information they will be exposed to during their careers. The overall approach reflects the broad multi-disciplinary, multi-scale reality of modern/contemporary biological sciences and will help students identify themes, patterns, and processes that transcend scales of biological organization from organisms to landscapes.