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Last update: prof. RNDr. Tomáš Herben, CSc. (01.04.2022)
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). |
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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. |
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Last update: prof. RNDr. Tomáš Herben, CSc. (09.03.2022)
A thorough syllabus is in the file SyllabusEN.doc - Disturbance
Basic topics taught
Introduction. The role of ecological theory in ecological thinking. Community ecology as a subdiscipline of ecology. |