BIOSM 1610 - Ecology and the Marine Environment

(BIO-AG, BIOLS-AG, BIO-AS, PBS-AS) (CU-SBY)

Summer. 3 credits. Student option grading.

Introductory Life Sciences/Biology distribution requirement. Offered in Maine at Shoals Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island.

J. Factor, J. Sparks.

This course provides an introduction to ecology, covering interactions between marine organisms and the environment at scales of populations, communities, and ecosystems.

Outcome 1: Students will be able to explain where and why different biomes occur globally as a function of Earth’s climate dynamics.

Outcome 2: Students will know how plants and animals cope with environmental variation through a range of adaptations that modify their respective heat and water balances.

Outcome 3: Students will describe processes of autotrophic and heterotrophic means of energy acquisition, and tradeoffs among these strategies.

Outcome 4: Students will apply fundamental principles of population growth and demography, including application to human populations and population harvest.

Outcome 5: Students will be introduced to species interactions including predation, parasitism, competition, and mutualism.

Outcome 6: Students will be able to describe community ecology, including factors that control patterns of species distribution, diversity and abundance.

Outcome 7: Students will have a basic understanding of broad biogeographical patterns of species distributions, including hypotheses explaining latitudinal species gradients, species diversity on islands, and the application of island biogeography theory to the design of nature reserves.

Outcome 8: Students will be able to describe threats to biodiversity and key principles of conservation biology.

Outcome 9: Students will be able to describe major pathways and mechanisms of nutrient cycling, including nutrient inputs, acquisition strategies, limitation, and losses, and major human impact on these cycles.

Outcome 10: Students will be able to identify causes, general magnitudes, and likely consequences of human-driven alterations to global cycles of carbon, nutrients, and climate.