Objective:
The course objective is for students to learn the classification, structure and function of organisms, ecological principles, and mechanisms of evolution.
Learning Outcomes:
- apply the processes of scientific inquiry including experimental design
- explain the essential elements of life, major hypotheses for life's history, mechanisms for the diversification of life, and macroevolution
- apply the tools of evolutionary biology to the analysis and evaluation of historical relationships among organisms;
- evaluate the ecological relationships of organisms at the population, community, and ecosystem level
- describe flow of energy within an ecosystem and the role of nutrient cycling in maintaining ecosystem integrity
- explain fundamental prokaryotic replication, metabolism, and cellular structure in relationship to evolution of diversity
- compare and contrast differences in animal and plant development and their life cycles
- describe how plants and animals maintain homeostasis: water and ion balance, gas exchange, energy and nutrient acquisition, temperature regulation; identify major groups and arrange them within currently recognized taxa
- compare and evaluate different phylogenies in terms of relationships amongst taxa
- describe structural organization/morphology
- identify and describe structures and relate them to their functions
- classify individual representative specimens to phylum
General Course Topics:
- Overview of the tree of life
- Phylogeny/evolutionary history of major taxa
- Systematics and taxonomy: classification schemes
- Prokaryotes
- Protists
- Fungi
- Survey of animal phyla
- Survey of plant phyla
- Animal systems structure: anatomy
- Animal systems function: physiology
- Plant systems structure: anatomy
- Plant systems function: physiology
- Animal development and life cycles
- Plant development and life cycles
- Population ecology
- Population structure, growth, regulation, and fluctuation
- Intraspecific interactions
- Social systems and behavior
- Community ecology
- Interspecific interactions: predator-prey relations, competition, symbiosis
- Community structure and succession
- Ecosystem diversity (biomes)
- Ecosystems ecology: trophic structure
- Energy flow
- Nutrient cycling and ecosystem integrity
- Conservation biology
- Mechanisms of evolutionary change: natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, and mutation, and nonrandom mating
- Population genetics
- Speciation and extinction