BIO 5150 – Graduate Seminar

(Foundations of Ecology)

Readings:

Week 1 – Arrange meeting times and give people their reading packets

Week 2-3  – Succession

            Week 2:

-          The Strategy of Ecosystem Development – Odum

-          Models, Mechanisms and Pathways of Succession – Pickett et al.

-          Mechanism of Succession in Natural Communities and their Role in Community Stability and Organization – Connell and Slatyer

Week 3:

-          Early Primary Succession on a Barren Volcanic Plain at Mount St. Helens, Washington – Moral and Wood

-          Causes and Ecosystem Consequences of Multiple Pathways of Primary Succession at Glacier Bay, Alaska - Fastie

Week 4-5 – Senescence

            Week 4:

-          An Unsolved Problem in Biology – Medawar

-          The Definition and Measurement of Senescence – Medawar

-          Pleiotropy, Natural Selection and the Evolution of Senescence – Williams

-          The Disposable Some Theory of Aging - Kirkwood

Week 5:

-          The Morphology of Postponed Senescence in Drosophila melanogaster -Rose et al.

-          Retarded Senescence in an Insular Population of Virginia Opossums – Austad

-          The Effects of Mating Status on Lifespan, Egg Laying, and Starvation Resistance in Drosophila melanogaster in Relation to Selection on Longevity - Service

Week 6-7 - Life History Theory

            Week 6:

-          The Population Consequence of Life History Phenomena – Cole

-          Life-History Tactics: A Review of the Ideas – Stearns

Week: 7:

-          Delayed Sexual Maturity and Demographics of Blanding’s Turtles: Implications for Conservation and Management of Long-Lived Organisms – Congdon et al.

-          Life-History Differentiation and the Maintenance of Monoecy and Dioecy in Sagittaria latifolia – Dorken and Barrett

Week 8-9 - Natural Selection

            Week 8:

-          Selection Experiments on Industrial Melanism in the Lepidoptera –Kettlewell

-          The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: a Critique of the Adaptationist Programme – Gould and Lewontin

-          Punctuated Equilibria: an Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism - Eldredge and Gould

Week 9:

-          An Experimental Analysis of Natural Selection on Body Size of Hatchling Turtles – Janzen

-          Rapid Evolution of Life History Traits in Populations of Poa annua – Till-Bottraud et al.

Week 10-11 - Parental Investment

            Week 10:

-          Parental Investment and Sexual Selection – Trivers

-          Propagule Size and Parental Care: The “Safe Harbor” Hypothesis - Shine

-          Parental Investment Decisions Rules and the Concorde Fallacy – Sargent and Gross

Week 11:

-          Posthatching Yolk Energy in a Lizard: Utilization Pattern and Interclutch Variation – Troyer

-          Comparative Evolutionary Ecology of Seed Size – Westoby et al.

-          Reptilian Viviparity in Cold Climates: Testing the Assumptions of an Evolutionary Hypothesis - Shine

Week 12-13 - Biogeography

            Week 12:

-          Sources, Sinks and Population Regulations – Pulliam

-          An Equilibrium of Insular Zoogeography – McArthur and Wilson

-          Single Species Spatial Dynamics May Contribute to Long-Term Rarity and Commonness – Hanski

Week 13:

-          Experimental Zoogeography of Islands: The Colonization of Empty Islands – Simberloff and Wilson

-          Population Dynamics in Complex Landscapes: A Case Study – Pulliam et al.

-          Metapopulation Structure and Migration in the Butterfly Melitaea cinxia – Hanski et al.

Week 14-15 - Species Diversity/ Food Web Complexity

            Week 14:

-          Food Web Complexity and Species Diversity – Robert Paine

-          Homage to Santa Rosalia or Why are there so many Kinds of Animals – G. E. Hutchinson

Week 15:

-          Population Ecology of Some Warblers of Northeastern Coniferous Forests - MacArthur

-          The Influence of Interspecific Competition and other Factors on the Distribution of the Barnacle Chthamalus stellatus – Connell

            -      The Trophic Dynamic Aspect of Ecology – Lindeman

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