BIOL 4120 Principles of Ecology

1. BIOL 4120Principles of Ecology Dafeng Hui Office: Harned Hall 320 Phone: 963-5777 Email: dhui@tnstate.edu

2. DafengHui, Ph.D. • Education Background • Ph.D. in Botany (Ecology), University of Oklahoma • MS in Biostatistics and Quantitative Genetics, Yangzhou University, PR China • BS in Agronomy, Yangzhou University, PR China • Post-doc research experience • Duke University (Field experiment) • Auburn University (Modeling)

3. Introduction (cont.) • Research interests • Global change ecology (CO2, temperature, precipitation etc) • Ecosystem ecology (carbon, water and nutrient cycling in grasslands, forests etc.) • Biostatistical applications in biological sciences (data analysis, synthesis) • Web pages: http://www.tnstate.edu/faculty/dhui • Teaching interests • Biostatistics (or Biometry) • Ecological modeling • Ecology

4. Student information • Please introduce yourself: • Your name • Major, Junior or senior? • Courses you have this semester • Courses you’ve taken that are relevant to ecology • Any other thing else you want to share (knowledge of ecology, expectation of the course etc)

5. Course information Office hours: MWF 11:30 am - 2:00 pm; T Th 9:00-1:00 pm; or by appointment Textbook: The Economy of Nature, 6th ed., Robert Ricklefs Freeman and Company ISBN10:  0716786974, ISBN13:  9780716786979 Lab manual: Ecology on Campus, 1st ed., Kingsolver, Robert. 2006. Person/Benjamin Cummings, Inc. ISBN10: 0805382143, ISBN13: 9780805382143

7. 1.Preparation – read the textbook 2.Download and print the lecture outline for notes at MYTSU website.

8. Attendance Required for both lecture and laboratory 0.5 point for each absence (lecture)

9. Grading policy • The overall grade for the course will be based on the standard TSU point-to-grade scale. • The distribution of points is: • Exams (four): 50% (extra points) • Final: 10% • Laboratory: 25% • Presentation: 10% • Attendance: 5% 

10. Homework, Lab report, Exam, Paper and summary

11. Ecology as a Science 0.1 What is ecology? 0.2 Why do we need to study Ecology? 0.3 How to study ecology?

12. 0.1 What is Ecology ? Ecology: ~ Greek word oikos (house or surroundings) +logy (study of) By ecology we mean the body of knowledge concerning the economy of nature – the investigation of the total relations of the animal both to its organic and to its inorganic environment. … … … Ecology is scientific study of the interactions between organisms and their environments. Ernst Haeckel, 1866

13. 0.1 What is Ecology ? Late 1800s, ecology came into general use. Ecologists The study of the relationships, distribution, and abundance of organisms, or groups of organisms, in an environment. S.I. Dodson, 1998

14. Ecology is NOT: • Environmental Science (i.e., the study of man's effect on natural systems) • Environmentalism (activism, aim to improving the environment). • Resource management • Wildlife • Fisheries • Soil Resources • Forestry

15. Ecology as a science is a process, not just the knowledge it generates • Much of our knowledge about the nature world is well established • e.g. Biome concept, succession, effects of climate change • Confirmed by observation, experiments, modeling • Our understanding of many issues is incomplete and imperfect • e.g.: which factors determine global patterns of species richness? How and where the biosphere sequesters carbon dioxide; role of predators in control prey populations.

16. 0.2 Why study Ecology? • Intellectual curiosity (explain phenomena) • Ecology has important impacts on everyone's daily lives (news on environment) • Ecosystem services and goods • Huge impact of humans on global ecosystems--ecology holds key to predicting our future. • To understand some of the natural laws (e.g., physical properties, energy transfer) that impose limitations on the interaction of organisms (including humans) with their living and nonliving environment.

17. Global Environmental Issues Global Warming Deforestation

18. 0.3 How to study ecology? • Ecology employs the scientific method. • Scientific method is a system of observation that is "formalized", which means that it is done is such a way that one can reproduce the observations under the same conditions. • It includes 1) observation and description, 2) development of hypotheses or explanations; and 3) test of these hypotheses, often with experiments.

19. The Scientific Method

20. For Example: Productivity and nutrient (N) in prairie grasslands of North America Observation and HypothesisData collection, Test • (observational, laboratory and field experiments, modeling)

21. BIOL 4120Principles of Ecology Dafeng Hui Office: Harned Hall 320 Phone: 963-5777 Email: dhui@tnstate.edu

22. Field experiments • experiments have some elements in common: • Treatment Groups: nitrogen, irrigation; number of species etc • Control Groups: no N applied • Randomization: randomly assign a treatment to a plot • Replication: several plots for same treatment. Cedar Creek LTER site, Uni. Of Minnesota

23. Experiment to test if excluding birds will increase caterpillar population and then consume more leaves of oak (top-down control) Marquis and Whelan (Uni. Of Missouri at St. Louis) Insects consume 10% of leaves, why not more? hypotheses: predators control or plant defense

24. Does the exclusion of bird increases the consumption by herbivores on plants? • Marquis and Whelan (Uni. Of Missouri at St. Louis) • Number of insects increased by 70% compared to control • Percentage of leaf missing jumped from 22% in control to 35%.

25. Estimation and prediction • Models: • Abstract, simplified representations of real systems. • Conceptual model and mathematical model • Use mathematical model to estimate and predict.

26. Are there any limitations to science? • Science is Self-Correcting • Science is limited by the ability of the scientists to collect and interpret data. • New technology makes it possible for science to correct misinterpreted data. • Uncertainty is an inherent feature of science

27. Chapter 1. The Economy of Nature 1.1 Ecology is organized into a hierarchical group of sub-disciplines (branches) 1.2 Hierarchical Organization and emergent Properties 1.3 Ecology is especially interdisciplinary. 1.4 Lecture arrangement

28. 1.1 Ecology is organized into a hierarchical group of subdisciplines • Organisms (Individual organism) • - living organisms, fundamental units of populations and communities • Populations • - group of individuals of a species • Communities • - an assemblages of species populations occurring together in space and time • Ecosystems • - a collection of two related components (biotic and abiotic) that function as a unit.

29. Ecosystem • Consists of two basic interacting components: • The living organisms, or biotic • The Physical environment, or abiotic • Ecosystem varies in size from small to large • An example • A forest ecosystem • Biotic: plants, animals, microbes that inhabit the forest • Abiotic: atmosphere, climate, soil, and water • Interaction: tree growths modify physical environment. Birds foraging on insects reduce insects and species abundance and composition.

30. Each ecological system embodies different processes

31. Ecology of individual organisms Individual organism forms the basic unit in ecology. It is the individual organism that responds to the environment. Behavioral ecology is the study of how behavior of individuals affects their ability to survive and reproduce. How animals adapt to local environment. Physiological Ecology (or Autecology) is the study of how physical factors, such at temperature, moisture, and light, affect the survival and reproduction and other biological processes of individual organisms. Evolution Ecology is the study of environment influence on the evolution of organisms. Natural selection, evolution of populations.

32. Ecology of group of individual organisms Population ecology is the study of how groups of individuals (the same species) grow (or shrink) and reproduce. Depending on the nature of the species, many factors (food availability, competition, predation etc.) may affect population growth. Community ecology is the study of how populations from different species interact to mutually affect each population's growth and survival. Community structure and dynamics. Ecosystem ecology is the study of whole living systems, with focus on the flow of energy and biomass in large scale living systems. Landscape ecology –study spatial patterns and underlying mechanisms (patches in landscape, fragmented landscape, corridors). Conservation ecology, restoration ecology, and global change ecology.

33. 1.2 Hierarchical Organization and Emergent Properties • Emergent Properties: • the set of phenomena that can be explained only by looking at a particular hierarchical level • e.g.: is the growth of an individual the same as that in a group of many (population)? The principle is a more formal statement of “the whole is more (or less) than the sum of the parts”. e.g.: species richness; ant colonies

34. Ecological processes have characteristic scales in space and time • Spatial variation: • Environment differs from place to place • Climate; Topography; Soil types  heterogeneity • Species (plant and animal) differ in space • Their interactions differ (e.g. dry and wet) • Temporal variation: • Environment varies from time to time (diurnal, seasonal, interannual) • Organisms vary (growth, age, size) • Their interactions differs. • Spatial-Temporal correlation (Big events)

35. 1.3 Ecology is especially interdisciplinary

36. 1.4 Lecture arrangement

37. The End