Community ecology
Master in Life Sciences, ENS
UNBIO1-039 (S07) | Community ecology
Year and Semester : M1 | S1
Where : Biology department, ENS
Duration : 45 hours
First and last day of class : November 5th, 2024 – February 4th, 2025
Coordinatoion
Mathilde SCHEIFLER, ENS
Credits
6 ECTS
Keywords
Biodiversity | ecological communities | species coexistence | ecological networks | macroecology | eco-evolutionary dynamics | community phylogenetics | microbial ecology | biogeography | conservation.
Course Prerequisites
The targeted audience is advanced undergraduates and graduate students in ecology and evolutionary biology. Participants trained in other fields are welcome provided they had exposure to fundamental notions of ecology.
Course objectives and description
Aims : The purpose of this advanced course of ecology is to provide a thorough introduction to the fields of community ecology, macroecology, biogeography, microbial ecology, as well as conservation. Lectures will serve to review the basic concepts/models and empirical evidence and introduce cutting-edge questions, while practical sessions will consist in exploring datasets.
Themes : This advanced Master course addresses the topic of ecological communities and the underlying biological processes : How do species coexist ? How are their interactions organized ? How do species interactions and environmental factors translate into patterns of diversity ? How does diversity evolve ? What are the specificities of microbial communities ? How do human-induced perturbations affect these dynamics ? How to conserve these ecological communities ?
Organisation :
The course will take place every Tuesday from November to January. It be divided into three parts.
Part 1 : We will first take a conceptual and theoretical approach to community ecology. We will introduce concepts and quantitative models for the ecology and/or evolution of ecological communities.
Part 2 : We will then particularly investigate the specificities of microbial communities, including oceanic planktonic communities and host-associated microbiomes.
Part 3 : Finally, we will cover the field of conservation by investigating how biodiversity in natural or anthropogenic communities is affected by human-driven disturbances and how we can remediate it.
Assessment
The evaluation will be based on a short-written exam and on the presentation of a research paper.
Course material
Slides used by instructors will be provided on Moodle.
Suggested reading in relationship with the module content
• Bolker BM (2008) Ecological Models and Data in R. Princeton University Press.
• Brown JM (1995) Macroecology. Univ. of Chicago Press.
• Hubbell SP (2001) The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography. Princeton Univ. Press.
• Loreau M (2010) From Populations to Ecosystems. Princeton Unversity Press.
• Magurran AE, McGill BJ (2011) Biological Diversity. Oxford University Press.
• Morin P (2011) Community Ecology (2nd edition). Wiley-Blackwell.
• Pimm SL (2002) Food Webs. Univ. of Chicago Press.
• Rosenzweig ML (1995) Species Diversity in Space and Time. Cambridge Univ. Press.
• van Straalen NM, Roelofs D (2006) Introduction to Ecological Genomics. Oxford Univ. Press.