Course Description: The objective of the course is to provide biology students with a basic understanding of how and why terrestrial plants are distributed at local, landscape, and global scales. Traditional concepts in plant ecology (e.g., niche theory, competition, and succession) will be emphasized during the first two-thirds of the course. The last third of the course will emphasize ecological concepts for landscape (e.g., patch dynamics), regional (e.g., migration), and global (e.g., climatic patterns) scales. The course should be beneficial for students interested in environmental-related careers.

The lab part of the course will involve a variety of experimental, observational, and analytical work. There will be a mix of indoor (e.g., pot experiments and analysis of remotely sensed data) and outdoor (e.g., field and sampling techniques used to characterize vegetation) work. Most of the outdoor work will revolve around plant communities available on the UCF campus or nearby state parks. Since my background is forest ecology, the emphasis will be on woody species. It is hoped that students will gain an appreciation for computer-assisted analysis of ecological patterns.

Course Prerequisites: The student should have minimally taken Fundamentals of Ecology. Plant diversity, local flora, statistics, and college algebra courses are also recommended.

Course Outline -

Week 1 - Background/history, plant ecology specializations, scale

Week 2 - Light and heat

Week 3 - Gas Exchange (carbon fixation and respiration)

Week 4 - Water, mineral nutrition

Week 6 (1st Article summary due) - Population growth, density

Community Ecology

Week 7 - Interactions among plants, competition, allelopathy

Week 8 - Plant - heterotroph interactions, symbiosis

Week 9 - Community structure, succession, disturbance

Spring Break (Go explore nature on your own)

Landscape Ecology

Week 10 - Concepts in landscape ecology, island biogeography

Week 11 - Patch dynamics, GIS, Remote Sensing

Week 13 (2nd Article Summary due) - Global/regional climatic patterns

Week 14 (Midterm 3) - Global and regional phytogeography, biomes

Final Exam

Student Responsibilities

Readings - Readings, for the most part, will be designed to coincide with the lecture and lab components of the course. They will be assigned regularly from the textbook Terrestrial Plant Ecology (Barbour et al. 1987). Both optional and required supplementary readings from the primary scientific literature and other sources will also be assigned on occasion. Required supplementary readings will be made available for photocopying or speed reading through the reserve desk in the library and in the BOT 4623 folder outside the Biology Office (Room 210). Students will be responsible to obtain optional readings which will probably be from ecological journals at the UCF library or available through interlibrary loan. Students should read laboratory handouts prior(!) to commencing laboratory work.

Article Synopses - To assist my becoming familiar with Florida vegetation and regional plant ecology, students will submit two summaries (each less than five pages of text) of scientific papers from the primary plant ecology literature. These papers will summarize ecological studies that relate to Floridian vegetation. One summary will be of a traditional plant ecology study which relates to the first half of the course, the other summary will relate to larger spatial-scale vegetation studies in Florida. These will require library research. Details will be given at a later date.

Midterms and Final Exam - There will be three in class midterms, roughly covering material that occurs at even intervals of the course (*4.5 weeks). The lowest midterm grade will be dropped. Thus, if you are unable to make one due to whatever, don't sweat it. But if you have to miss two, that could cause trouble. The final exam will be comprehensive and mandatory. Exam questions will be of a short answer/essay nature. These typically will not involve regurgitation of lecture notes or definitions, but an analysis of new (but related) information or the synthesis of ideas. These will be derived from concepts covered in lecture, lab, and required readings. The exams will be designed to make you think and function as additional learning experiences.

Performance Evaluation -

Midterms (2 x 25%) = 50%

Final Exam = 25%

Article Summaries (2 x 10%) = 20%

Discretionary (e.g., lab participation, attendance) = 5%