Conservation Biology

Ecology & Evolutionary Biology 310

Fall, 1999

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Photocopies of the assigned reading will be provided in the Departmental office (TLS 312). Online links to some of the readings will also be provided, where possible. Some of these will be accessible only if you are witnin the UConn.Edu domain. A few will be accessible from some other universities. The copies provided in the Departmental office are shared copies. If you want a copy for your files or if you are going to have the copy for more than a day, please make a copy for yourself and return the originals to the box. Please remember that this is a course in conservation biology. I encourage you to read the copies available on the web if at all possible. Don't make hard copies unless you intend to keep and refer to them.

World-Wide Web

Virtual copies of the syllabus, lecture schedule, and the list of suggested readings are available on the World-Wide Web at http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/eeb310/eeb310.html . You should plan to check the lecture schedule fairly regularly, because I'll be adding links to related information and an outline of lecture notes for some lectures. I will also be updating the readings as the semester moves along.

Grading

The short projects will be short (4-5 page) discussions of a single issue in conservation biology. The topic will be announced at least one week before the paper is due. The term project will be a longer (15-20 page) investigation of a topic of your choice in conservation biology. I encourage you to select a topic early and discuss it with me, both so I can make sure you are working on an appropriate topic and so I can provide some pointers to useful references.

Course Description

This course is designed to introduce you to the ways in which principles of population genetics, population ecology, community ecology, behavioral ecology, and systematics can be used to conserve and protect biological diversity. The focus will be on the biological issues, not on social, legal, or political considerations, though some attention to the social context in which conservation programs are implemented is unavoidable. My intent is to show how the standard tools that evolutionary biologists, ecologists, and systematists use can be applied to the solution of some practical problems in conservation biology.

Some of you are already more familiar than you want to be with genetic drift and inbreeding. Others of you could probably do a sensitivity analysis of the leading eigenvalue from a Leslie matrix in your sleep. Some of you don't even know what those sentences mean. No matter. I'll reintroduce you to everything you need to know about such technical details. I'll also introduce you to some things you probably don't know much (if anything) about, e.g., statistical decision theory.

Throughout the course I'll emphasize how different the approach of a conservation biologist may be from that of a research scientist. Decisions must often be made before all the facts are available, and there are many things it would be interesting to know that it may not make any difference to know. Deciding not to intervene is just as much a decision as deciding to intervene. As research scientists we often withhold judgement and suggest that further work is necessary. Conservation biologists rarely have that luxury. They can rarely choose not to make a decision, rather they must make the best decision they can.

You may also be interested in the 1997 edition of this course.

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