Community Ecology and Ecosystems

The course introduces community ecological theory and analysis methods and ecosystem processes and services. Central themes are patterns in species richness and biodiversity, methods to describe patterns on community level, ecosystem functions, predation and other interspecific interactions, disturbance effects, succession, and food webs. The links between community and ecosystem processes and services will be described with theory and examples. The course gives a background for conservation biology with examples on management in different landscapes and ecosystems. The students work in groups and during a field course they gather data, during exercises they process their data with different mathematical methods and write a group report in the format of a scientific paper. The students must choose between a terrestrial field course with focus on plants, or a freshwater aquatic field course with focus on fish and crustaceans (with a maximum of 12 students on the latter).

Knowledge

After completing the course the students should:

• Have knowledge about different drivers for community composition.
• Know the basic theories about mechanisms important to species distribution and abundance
• Have a general understanding of the links between community composition and ecosystem functions.
• Be able to understand and interpret methods used to describe patterns in occurrence and distribution of species in natural communities.

Skills

The student can:

• Apply different diversity indices
• Apply relevant statistical methods to understand community ecological patterns
• Explain central theories and discuss important ecological mechanisms that influence ecosystems and community ecological patterns in nature.

General competence

The student can:

• To some extent plan, carry out, analyse and report a scientific project

Learning methods and activities

• Lectures: 30 hours
• Seminars and exercises: 40 hours
• Written and oral presentation of group project and active seminar participation
• 4-days field course during the second week of the semester

Mandatory activities.

• Approved presentation of project work
• Seminar and exercise participation
• Approved field course participation