1-Intro to Ecology

The exam is scheduled for Wednesday, December 4th.

The exam covers lectures, assigned readings, and online materials.

The topics include Intro to ecology, climate, biomes, population ecology, community ecology, and ecosystem ecology.

Students should attend class, read assigned texts, ask questions, learn actively, and actively seek assistance from teaching assistants.

Lecture outlines, PDFs, and PowerPoint slides are provided before each class.

If struggling, talk to the online teaching assistant (TA) and/or study with successful students immediately.

Each day's lecture includes ecology news, daily learning objectives, practice questions, and the lecture itself.

The goal is for students to learn about ecology, participate in lessons, ask questions, and actively engage in the process of learning.

Ecology is the scientific study how organisms interact with their environment.

A Central- and South-American ant with extremely fast jaws.

An adaptation that now has a different function from its original purpose.

How organisms affect each other in their surroundings.

A very fast moving ant with a unique jaw mechanism.

Non-living parts of an environment, like temperature, light, water, and wind.

Living organisms in an environment (plants, animals, etc.).

Different levels of focus in studying nature - from individual organisms to the entire biosphere.

A single living thing.

A group of the same species living in the same area.

All different species living and interacting in a particular area.

A systematic approach to studying nature (observation, question, hypothesis, experiment, results, conclusion).

A study designed to understand the effects of large animal extinctions on ecosystems. It involved removing different groups of animals from a simulated savanna environment and observing the changes in plant life and other smaller animals.

In the extinction experiment, this involved completely removing all large and medium-sized animals from the simulated savanna environment. This simulates a scenario where large animal extinction has drastically altered the ecosystem.

In the extinction experiment, this involved removing only the largest mammals and allowing medium-sized animals to remain. This represents a more gradual extinction scenario.

In the extinction experiment, this treatment only removed elephants, leaving other large and medium-sized animals present. It focuses specifically on the effects of elephant extinction on the environment.

In the extinction experiment, this served as the control group. It included all animals, allowing for comparisons to understand the effects of removing different groups.