Freshwater Ecology

The course covers properties of water and the significance of these properties for the structuring of plants and animals on the individual-, population- and community level. The course covers spatial and temporal variation in natural ecosystems, including effects of human activity and climate change. Important topics include an overview over the most important groups of organism, community structure, and control of communities through top-down (predator control) and bottom-up mechanisms (available food).

KNOWLEDGE:

• Basic limnology and water quality.
• Overview of major functional groups of organisms in freshwater
• Effects of land use, climate change and other anthropogenic sources of influence on freshwater ecosystems
• Effects of abiotic factors on eco-physiology and life history of freshwater organisms
• Effects of abiotic factors on trophic interactions, with emphasis on competition, predation and parasitism
• Phenotypic responses to trophic interactions
• The role of bottom-up vs. top-down regulation in freshwater food webs

SKILLS AQUIRED:

• Critical evaluation of primary literature
• Applying key methods for fish and zooplankton surveys
• Use of the program R for analyses of data
• Conducting laboratory experiments using aquatic organisms
• Analysing and reporting data from lab- and field studies of aquatic organisms

GENERAL COMPETENCE:

• The course gives a special competence linked to environmental problems in freshwater and the regulatory mechanisms for management of freshwater

Lectures: 18 hours

Field course: 3 days

Lab experiments : 10 hours

Seminars: 24 hours

Experimental work: 20 hours

Analyzing and reporting experimental results: 10 hours

Total expected workload: ca. 225 hours