Syllabus Paper Presentations Announcements
Biology 5301.002 – Graduate Seminar – Classics in Ecology and Evolution
Spring 2005
Wednesday 4:00 – 5:00 (or TBA) WSB 226
Syllabus
Instructor: Dr. Chris M. Ritzi
Office: Warnock Science Building - 216
Phone: 837- 8420
Email: critzi@sulross.edu
Office hours: Wednesday and Thursday 1:30-4:00 or appt.
Class Website: http://faculty.sulross.edu/critzi/
Text: NONE. You will be responsible for either picking up or making a copy of each week’s article in the office, as well as supplying supplemental materials.
Course Description: In this course we will read and discuss a variety of papers that helped to shape our current understanding of ecology and evolution. The goal for each week is to understand what theory or idea was being presented at the time of the publication, and how our understanding of this phenomenon has changed since this time (if it has.) It is everyone’s responsibility to read the paper each week, and to be prepared to discuss the topics. If you are the presenter of the week, please bring a little extra outside material relevant to the subject matter to class, to help to broaden the topic.
Tests: There are none, therefore you have one less thing to worry about.
Grading: You will be assessed based on your participation and preparedness for each week’s class, with extra emphasis on those days in which you are leading the discussion. Needless to say, you can not participate if you are not present.
Attendance: Students missing 20% of lectures (3 lectures) may be dropped from the class with an F per the SRSU catalog. Please notify your instructor BEFORE missing class for authorized activities, death in the family, or illness. REGARDLESS OF WHY AN ABSENCE OCCURS, YOU MAY BE GIVEN AN F FOR THE COURSE GRADE IF YOU ACCUMULATE SIX ABSENCES.
Lecture courtesy: The general rules of classroom etiquette are below.
1) This is a graduate seminar, so feel free to talk about the material as a group. This doesn’t mean you should talk about other things for the hour.
2) No eating, chewing, dipping, etc. (unless it is a brown bag session)
3) Please turn cell phones and pagers to silent while in class. They are disruptive to the entire class, and detract from learning.
Students with disabilities will be provided reasonable accommodations. If you would like to request such accommodations because of physical, mental, or learning disability, please contact the ADA Coordinator for Program Accessibility at 837-8178, UC 211.
Feb 8 - Ritzi - "Heritable True Fitness and Bright Birds: A Role for Parasites?"
Feb 15 - Bardwell - "Food web complexity and community dynamics"
Feb 22 - Livingston - "Laboratory experiments on speciation: What have we learned in 40 years/"
Mar 1 - Hartke-Quiett - " The Evolution of Altruistic Behavior" and " The Evolution of Cooperation"
Mar 15 - Weckesser - "Landscape Ecolgy: A heierarchical perspective can help scientists understand spatial patterns"
Mar 22 - McAlister - "Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems"
Mar 29 - Hartke-Quiett - "Constraints on the Evolution of Mutualisms"
Apr 5 - McAlister - "Biological Feedbacks in Global Desertification"
Apr 12 - Livingston - "The optimal balance between size and number of offspring"
Apr 19 - Fenstermacher - "The evolution of self-fertilization and inbreeding depression in plants. 2. Empirical observations."
Apr 26 - Weckesser - "Ecological mechanisms and landscape ecology" (maybe)
May 3 - Bardwell - "Resource partitioning in ecological communities"
31- Jan We have a class time. Yeah! We will met in WSB 226 at 2:00 pm on Tuesdays. First meeting with be February 1st.
Geology of West Texas files
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