Natural History Club

Eldridge Adams organizes a natural history club that is open to anyone who is interested. If you would like to be added to the list for e-mail announcements, send him a message expressing your interest at

Eldridge.Adams@uconn.edu

More information about the natural history club is available at its web site.

Notes and reading for 9/8

The lecture notes and reading (only one this time) for the 8th of September are now available. Notes for the 10th probably will not be available until some time on the 9th. (I'll be out of town most of next week.)

December 12th Teale Lecture cancelled

Rita Colwell, Director of the National Science Foundation, was scheduled to give the Teale Lecture on December 12th. Unfortunately, she has had to cancel her visit to UConn, so there will not be a lecture on that date (which is why you won't find it on the schedule any more).

Minor change to 8/27 lecture notes

I made a minor change to the notes to tomorrow's lecture. If you happened to print a copy, you'll want to look at the fourth bullet point on the HTML page titled "The causes of extinction."

As you'll see, it's a very small change, so please don't print the notes again. Just write a note in the margin.

Updated links

The links to suggested readings for tomorrow's lecture were not working. I think I've managed to fix them now. Sorry for any inconvenience.

I also updated information on the location of the 9/23 Teale Lecture (TLS 154 instead of the Dodd Center).

Notes for September 3rd

Lecture notes for September 3rd are now available, and I don't expect to be making more revisions until the middle of next week.

Readings for September 3rd

I've posted the reading list for September 3rd. The notes aren't revised yet, but they should be by late tomorrow afternoon. Check back then (if you're watching this space and getting that far ahead already).

Notes and readings for 8/27

Lecture notes and suggested readings for August 27th are now available. Notes for the 3rd of September will probably not be available until the last week of August.

Notes and readings for 8/25

Notes and suggested readings for the August 25th lecture are now available. Those for the Augst 27th lecture should be available early next week.

Grading

I've decided (tentatively) on a grading scheme for the course. You can find it by following the Overview link above. Since I've never figured out how to give exams in this course, I'll be doing what I've done in past years -- assigning a series of short projects and one long term project.

For the short projects I will pick a fairly narrow topic related to the subjects we have recently covered in class. I'll give you some guidance about papers or other materials you may want to refer to, but I do not expect a comprehensive literature review. I'll be looking for 4-5 pages of text (11-12 point font, double spaced) in which you use the principles we've discussed to answer a small set of directed questions about a particular topic. I'll make the questions as specific as I can, but part of the challenge in conservation biology is learning what questions to ask, so don't be surprised if I expect you to figure out part of what question needs to be answered (or if I throw out some leads I expect you to be smart enough to ignore).

The term project is your chance to explore a topic that you're interested in in greater depth. For this project I am looking for a fairly comprehensiver review of the literature on some topic. That means that you're going to have to narrow your focus quite a bit, since I'm also looking for no more than 15-20 pages of text (not including any figures or tables you decide to include and literature cited). The only restriction on the topic is that it must be germane to the course, i.e., it must focus on conservation biology, not on political or economic issues, and it must focus on conservation biology, not on interesting issues in ecology or evolution without a direct tie to conservation practice. I suggest that you choose a topic and discuss it with me fairly early in the semester so that you have time to do the necessary literature review and so that we agree on a topic that will meet the course requirements, i.e., satisfy me.

Tentative lecture schedule set

I just finished the first draft of the lecture schedule. You'll find it under the "Schedule" link. If you click on any of the lecture titles, you'll find additional information about that lecture, including a link to on-line versions of the course notes (HTML and PDF) and a list of suggested readings.

Important: I haven't confirmed the dates or exact topics for any of the guest lectures yet. There may be more or fewer than currently appear in the schedule. I'll removed the "tentative" designation only after I've confirmed the date and topic. Stay tuned.

Important: The on-line course notes are from the 2001 edition of the course. I know of errors in several of the lectures, and there are sure to be changes because of changes in the field in the last two years. I'll post a notice here each time I update a set of notes, and I'll try to do it a day or two before the relevant lecture (although I'm not making any promises). In any case, I recommend that you not print any of these notes until you see a notice here. More importantly, since this is a course inj conservation biology, I recommend that you save some paper and not print them at all, unless you really think you need the hard copy for reference.