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Course, academic year 2023/2024
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Community ecology. Introduction to ecological theory. - MB120P85
Title: Community ecology. Introduction to ecological theory.
Czech title: Ekologie společenstev. Úvod do ekologické teorie.
Guaranteed by: Department of Botany (31-120)
Faculty: Faculty of Science
Actual: from 2023
Semester: summer
E-Credits: 4
Examination process: summer s.:
Hours per week, examination: summer s.:2/2, Ex [HT]
Capacity: unlimited
Min. number of students: unlimited
4EU+: no
Virtual mobility / capacity: no
State of the course: cancelled
Language: English
Note: enabled for web enrollment
Guarantor: prof. RNDr. Tomáš Herben, CSc.
Opinion survey results   Examination dates   Schedule   
Annotation -
Last update: prof. RNDr. Tomáš Herben, CSc. (01.04.2022)
We begin on Monday, 1 June, Seminarium of the Dept of Botany (lecture room BB, 2nd floor, at the end of the corridor) at 9,30.

The course aims at presenting major concepts in the current ecological thinking, mainly at interspecific and community levels. It has a strong theoretical component. It is organized as a hands-on course, with interactive paper reading and discussions, and modelling of ecological concepts in the R environment. Students are expected to read papers for each lecture in advance (see the file 2019En.xls, which lists papers to be read for each lesson).

The lectures are in Czech or English. As a rule, English is used when Erasmus or other students not speaking Czech are present.

Each lesson has these parts:

(*) reading and paper discussion (for papers to be read for each lesson, see 2017En.xls). We expect that everybody will read one paper thoroughly, and have a look at the other paper. At the lesson, we will give some time (10-15 mins) to each group to discuss the paper among themselves. Then each group will present the paper to the other group (no formal presentation, but whiteboard-marker system welcome). The presentation should primarily concentrate on (i) what the authors wanted to know and why it was interesting (context)(ii) how they did it (overview of the methodology; details need not be discussed), (iii) basic findings, and (iv) what does it mean (how the findings contribute to the questions at the beginning). Group A: surnames begin with A-M, Group B: surnames begin with N-Z

(*) lecture by one of us, where we will present concepts and ideas from the given topic (1 to 1.5 hrs)

(*) practicals with R functions illustrating some of the phenomena from the given topic (ca 1 hr). Knowledge of the R environment is helpful, but not strictly necessary (as all functions and scripts are available in advance, and only minor modifications are necessary to make the whole thing run). Shiny applications for the practicals are here: https://saileesakhalkar.github.io/communityecology/models/


The course takes place on Wednesdays from 9 to 12:00 or 12:30 (depending how we manage and how the participants enjoy it) in B12 at Benátská 2.

Important files on this server:

2021En_out.xls contains the time schedule of the current year and papers to be read for individual lessons
References.doc contains bibliographic references for these and some other papers.
SyllabusEN.doc contains a syllabus of the course.
Summary of several basic concepts (logistic growth, predator-prey, island biogeography is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVI_3WI4kd8 (in Czech only)

https://saileesakhalkar.github.io/communityecology/models/ lists the Shiny applications for the practicals (built by Sailee Sakhalkar).

Requirements to the exam -
Last update: prof. RNDr. Tomáš Herben, CSc. (10.03.2017)

Write an essay in which you will use the perspective of the course on a topic of your researc/diploma thesis/etc. We expect a formal (not necessarily mathematical or implmeneted on a computer - verbal analysis in sufficient if there is enough analytical rigor) analysis of the ecological system you are working on/interested in, discussion of state variables, relationships among them. Discuss why such model (if implemented) could be helpful and what kinds of questions it can help to raise/answer.

Further, we expect that each participant will read the assay of somebody else, and be able to point out its strengths and weaknesses, and ask a few (good!) questions that should stimulate the author to further thinking/development/analysis.

At the exam, they should present briefly (<5 mins) the main concepts of the essay and respond to questions both of the "referee" and by ourselves. We also will be asking a few questions (from the syllabus) to make sure that you understand the key concepts of ecological theory and community ecology.

Syllabus -
Last update: prof. RNDr. Tomáš Herben, CSc. (09.03.2022)

A thorough syllabus is in the file SyllabusEN.doc

- Disturbance
 https://saileesakhalkar.shinyapps.io/disturbance/


- Coexistence with environmental fluctuation
https://saileesakhalkar.shinyapps.io/Coexistence/

 

Basic topics taught

 

Introduction. The role of ecological theory in ecological thinking. Community ecology as a subdiscipline of ecology.

Dynamics and stability of ecological communities, transient and equilibrium states, dynamical models.

Resource competition.

Temporal and spatial variability in ecology. Non-equilibrium processes in species coexistence.

Interactions between trophic levels, predator-prey interactions, trophic cascades.

Metapopulation dynamics. Dynamics of communities of sedentary organisms.

Temporal and spatial variation in abundances, species abundance distributions. Geometry of spatial distributions.

Patterns of biological diversity.

Null models in ecology and their use. Models of diversity dynamics. Hubbell's neutral theory.

Individual and environment in evolutionary time. Life-history trade-offs.

Functional traits and community structure. Phylogenetic structure of communities.

 
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