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Course Content:

This course is designed to give upper division undergraduates and beginning graduate students hands-on experience in the field of experimental evolutionary ecology. The course is composed of lectures and labs. The lectures will introduce some of the current "big questions" in ecology and evolution that are experimentally tractable. The labs will be devoted to designing, running and analyzing various experiments. Students will read the primary scientific literature in order to gain a better understanding of how experimental approaches have been used to explore ecological and evolutionary phenomena. In the labs, students (in groups of four or five) will conduct experiments in the laboratory to investigate wide-ranging issues (such as the evolution of bacterial antibiotic resistance, the evolution of multicellularity in eukaryotes, and coevolution of pathogens and their hosts). Grades will be based on weekly quizzes, lab reports, and a single final group presentation.

Useful Downloads & Links

The syllabus can be downloaded here.

The student availability calendar and music host list is available here.

The final presentation schedule can be downloaded here.

Hours:

Lecture:

3:30pm - 4:50pm, Tuesdays and Thursdays, HCK 132

Lab:

8:30am - 10:20am, 10:30am - 12:20pm, or 12:30 - 2:20pm, Tuesdays, Hitchcock 346

Instructor:

Ben Kerr

Teaching Assistants:

Elizabeth Duan, Nate Grassi, and Chenxi Liu

Peer Facilitators

Maya Abhyankar, Lauren Ackermann, Dania Ahmed, Samaya Badrieh, Euan McCubbin, Imraa Omar, Maxine Phillips, Amanda Ro, Nora Tosch-Berneburg, Bobby Wang, and Bella Yuan

Categories: Bio481