ZL3042:03
Rainforest Populations and Communities
Townsville
Prerequisites: BS2001 (MB2060 or ZL2007 or ZL2102)
Inadmissable Subject Combination: ZL5042
26 lectures, 13 tutorials, 30 hours field work. Second semester.
Staff: Assoc. Professor R Alford.
Animals live in populations. Groups of populations inhabiting the same area make up biological communities. Processes operating at these levels control the biodiversity of habitats and regions. This subject presents the conceptual framework needed to understand these processes and illustrates that framework whenever possible using examples from rainforest populations and communities, which are among the most complex and interesting ecological systems in existence. Topics presented include population growth, species interactions, community patterns and dynamics, food webs and the effects of disturbance and scaling on diversity. An extended field trip to the zoology and tropical ecology field station at Kirrama allows students to look firsthand at these systems and the animals inhabiting them and see how they interact.
Learning Objectives:
- understand modern concepts of population processes and species interactions and their relation to the structure and function of animal communities;
- understand how communities can be defined and measured and how processes act at the community level;
- gain an ability to critically evaluate original research;
- understand the composition and structure of rainforest communities and how they are affected by basic processes.
Assessment by examination (50%); tutorial performance (15%); essay (20%); field notebook (15%).
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