Biology 305 Format and Schedule

Format, Schedule and Evaluation

General

Lectures (schedule) are held every Tuesday and Thursday from 9h00 to10h00 in the Redpath Museum Auditorium. A practical class (schedule) is held every Tuesday from 14h00 to 17h00 (2:00pm to 5:00pm), during which both professors will teach a section: Professor Green will teach the phylogenetic method and Professor Bell will cover the ecological method. Evaluation for the course will be based on a poster as well as a final exam held in the formal exam period.
[Back to top]

Lectures

The schedule of the lectures is as follows:

Date	Lecturer	Topic
January 4	Bell 1	The nature of diversity Variation and diversity. Individuality. The sources of variation. The state of knowledge of organic diversity. The two aspects of diversity, ecological and phylogenetic. The theory of diversity. Role of neutral models.
January 6	Green 1	Cataloguing diversity: the history of ideas Defining Systematics, Taxonomy vs. Systematics, History of Systematics, Typology and Essentialism, The "New Systematics", Naturalness.
January 11	Green 2	Systematics: growth of the modern school "Schools" of systematics and the Systematics Wars, Evolutionary Systematics, Phenetics, phenetic measures.
January 13	Green 3	Revolution in Systematics: phenetics and the rise of cladistics Phenetic Clustering, OTUs, Phenograms, problems with phenetics; Willi Hennig and Phylogenetic Systematics (cladistics), plesiomorphies and apomorphies, cladograms, characters states.
January 18	Green 4	Modern Systematics. Cladistic methods Rules of cladistics, outgroup comparison, parsimony, trees, methods of finding trees.
January 20	Green 5	Modern Systematics. Cladistic influence Concensus, phylogenetic hypotheses, problems with cladistics, reconstructing phylogenetic history. Comparative method.
January 25	Bell 2	The process of diversification The tendency for diversity to increase through time at all scales. The branching process and the generation of phylogenetic trees. Neutral models and tree structure.
January 27	Bell 3	The phylogenetic problem Variation of diversity among groups at different taxonomic levels. Theories of phylogenetic variation in diversity. The pattern of diversification; structure of phylogenetic trees.
February 1	Bell 4	Abundance and distribution Range - abundance - dispersion. The neutral model of abundance. Frequency distribution of abundance and range. The range-abundance relationship. Dispersion. The many ways of being rare.
February 3	Bell 5	The comparative biology of abundance and rarity Size: the equal-mass theory. Ecological characteristics of abundant and rare species.
February 8	Green 6	Species and Higher Taxa Historical ideas, definitions and concepts of species. Ontology, classes and natural kinds. Species as individuals. Operational concepts: Biological species vs. Phylogenetic species.
February 10	Green 7	The Species Problem The nature of the problem. Recognition of species, hypothesis tests. Polytypic species, species complexes, hybridization. Species ranges, species transitions, and speciation. Logic, fuzzy and otherwise.
February 15	Bell 6	Production and diversity Diversity - production - evenness. Production: scale and structure of the environment. Diversity: variation among sites.
February 17	Bell 7	Neutral models of diversity Community drift and island biogeography. The general diversity-production relationship; species-number and species-area rules.
February 22	Study Break
February 24	Study Break
February 29	Bell 8	Theories of diversity: resource competition Depletable resources. Zero-isocline theory. Maintenance of diversity in experimental systems.
March 2	Bell 9	Theories of diversity: spatial heterogeneity Depletable patches: theory of subdivided populations. Spatial structure of environments and communities. Species diversity and habitat diversity.
March 7	Bell 10	Theories of diversity: disturbance Theory of variable environments. Temporal tructure of environments and communities. Succession. Species diversity and disturbance.
March 9	Green 8	Species Distributions Ranges: dispersal and vicariance. Range limits, physiological and geographic. Barriers, range expansion and contraction. Population decline and endangerment.
March 14	Green 9	Regional and local biogeography Species Interactions affecting distribution. Range overlap, hybrid zones, habitat partitioning, communities. The Pleistocene glaciation and its effects.
March 16	Green 10	Global Biogeography Ecological vs. Historical Biogeography. Distribution patterns, realms, biomes. Centres of origin and dispersal theory. Panbiogeography.
March 21	Green 11	Vicariance biogeography Effect of Continental drift. Cladistic biogeography, area cladograms. Earth history and taxon history. Mass extinctions.
March 23	Green 12	A Case History : Caribbean Lizards Anolis lizards in the Caribbean: species diversity, origins, biogeography, habitat partitioning, communities, phylogeny.
March 28	Bell 11	Functional diversity Interaction among ecologically non-equivalent species. Lotka-Volterra dynamics Food-webs and community structure. Diversity within and among guilds and other groupings.
March 30	Bell 12	The microcosm Experimental approaches to community structure. Microcosm experiments. Sealed microcosms.
April 4	Bell 13	Consequences of diversity Theory of properties of mixtures. Properties of mixtures in terrestrial and aquatic situations. Likely consequences of biodiversity loss.
April 6	Green 13	Endangered species Extinction risk. Risk assessment, global and local. Politics of endangered species. US Endangered Species Act (ESA) and Canada's Species at Risk Act (SARA).

[Back to top]

Practical classes

The schedule of the Tuesday practical classes is given below:

Class	Date	Phylogenetic section (Green)	Ecological section (Bell)
1	January 4	Concept and conduct of the practical classes
2	January 11	Naïve Classification	Design of Surveys
3	January 18	Phenetics	Descriptive Statistics
4	January 25	Cladistics I	Spatial Analysis
5	February 1	Cladistics II	Quantitative Data
6	February 8	Classification	External analysis
7	February 15	Phylogenetic Analysis	Comparative Method
8	February 22	STUDY BREAK. Project titles posted
9	February 29	Project selection and poster advising
10	March 7	Poster preparation
11	March 14	Poster preparation
12	March 21	Poster tutorials
13	March 28	Poster set-up. Poster viewing in subsequent week
14	April 4	Vernissage. Poster evaluation

[Back to top]

Evaluation

Students will be evaluated in two ways. The first is a poster featuring analyses of a data set that will provided in class. Several data sets will be available for either section, phylogenetic or ecological. The second part of the evaluation will be a standard exam written during the formal final exam period. One-third of the final grade will be determined by the poster and two thirds by the final exam. Each professor's section on the final will contribute equally. This final will differ markedly from finals of previous years, so using previous exams may not help.
[Back to top]