Ecology (BGY1010M)

Covers population growth, different types of growth, carrying capacity, and negative density dependence.

Includes the Allee effect, intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting population growth, life-history traits, r- and K- selected species, and reproduction-survival trade-offs.

Covers competitive exclusion, different types of ecological niche, competitive release, resource partitioning, character displacement and a couple of examples.

Includes how to prove the competitive exclusion principle, the flour beetles experiment as a case study, colonisation and competition, keystone species, interference competition, and apparent competition.

Includes the introduction to mutualism, commensalism, mutualism and resources, how it provides protection, and sanctions to prevent parasitic behaviour.

Includes functional responses, Lotka-Volterra equations, and a case study of wolves and moose on Isle Royale.

Covers relationships between area size and species abundance and diversity, and a study called the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project.

Covers an introduction to community ecology, including accumulation curves, molecular studies in ecology, and community structures.

Includes mutualism in community structure, mycorrhiza in communities of plants, coral reef mutualism, and sanctions which follows on from a previous lecture.

Includes the effects of predation, tools to investigate it, and the snowshoe hare cycle as a case study. It also covers the effect of a keystone species.