Ecology
Undergraduate · Biology
Syllabus focus
Topics typically covered
Standard syllabus
Organismal and population ecology
- Physiological ecology and niche concepts
- Life history strategies and tradeoffs
- Population growth models and demography
- Metapopulations and dispersal (intro)
- Species interactions: competition, predation, mutualism
- Behavioral ecology foraging/mating survey
Communities and ecosystems
- Community structure and diversity metrics
- Succession and disturbance regimes
- Food webs and trophic cascades
- Energy flow and ecological efficiency
- Biogeochemical cycles in depth
- Landscape and global ecology intro
Applied ecology
- Conservation biology principles
- Invasive species and restoration ecology
- Climate change ecological impacts
- Agroecology and urban ecology survey
- Environmental policy interfaces (survey)
- Human–wildlife conflict case studies
STEM / applied
Quantitative and field skills
- Sampling design and null models (intro)
- Regression and ANOVA on ecological data (intro)
- Mark–recapture and distance sampling concepts
- GIS/remote sensing awareness
- Interpreting species distribution models (survey)
- Reproducible analysis notebooks for field data
Practice
- Designing a field project proposal
- Critical reading of ecology papers
- Communicating uncertainty in forecasts
- Stakeholder engagement for conservation (intro)
- Ethics of field research and permitting
- Capstone: analyze a public ecological dataset
Notes
Field components vary by season and campus. Tutoring emphasizes models, graphs, and experimental design language.