| Description |
We will meet with all participants of the lecture, seminar, and practical course on the first date of the lecture: 9th April at 8:00 in seminar room 228 in Soldmannstr. 23.
Participants will receive an email update about a week beforehand with the Moodle login and more details regarding the first meeting.
We will upload some pre-information to Moodle, where you can also find more information about the seminar and the practical course.
Note: The lecture is open for everyone. In the associated seminar and practical course, only limited space is available and thus, only in the module selection procedure approved students are allowed to participate. The module selection module is the excel file-procedure for MSc. Biodiversity, Ecology & Evolution, and the MSc. Landscape Ecology and Nature Conservation students! Please ignore the "zugelassen" here in the HIS-system, which does not count!
Lecturers: Dr. Marvin Kiene |
| Certificates |
For M.Sc. Biodiversity, Ecology & Evolution, Module E2.8:
Assessment component: Written examination 60 M or Presentation 20 M on the lecture and seminar
For M.Sc. Biodiversität und Ökologie, Module A21:
1 Exam/Klausur (60 minutes) to the content of the lecture; 1 ungraded talk in the seminar; and 1 Report/Hausarbeit in the practical course (all in English).
For M.Sc. LENC in Module E16:
1 Exam/Klausur (60 minutes) to the content of the lecture; 1 talk in the seminar.
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| Learning Content |
Functional ecology is an emerging field in ecology that tries to functionally describe ecological patterns and observations to get a deeper insight and understanding of ecosystem dynamics and species phenotypes and evolution. Functional description further helps improve ecological models and prediction capabilities for future scenarios. In this course we cover some fundamental ecosystem dynamics, like interspecific interactions, trophic cascades and nutrient cycling. You will learn more about functional traits, phenotypic plasticity and ecological stoichiometry. Since it is essential to carefully design field and laboratory experiments, especially in this field, we will also cover experimental design and statistical approaches, which are tightly connected to each other. Therefore, parts of the lecture will be a hands-on R and statistics workshop where we will provide and exercise examples how to plan experiments according to the asked questions and required statistics to answer them. Those that participate in the functional ecology II course, will have the opportunity to directly apply the learned skills in a real experiment.
The functional ecology I course comprises the lecture and exercises with R, as well as a seminar where the participants will become acquainted with a chosen publication, which they will have to analyse for its scientific quality (i.e., experimental design, chosen statistics, etc.) and present their findings and thoughts to the other participants. Additionally, all participants will also be able to listen and challenge the presenters of the functional ecology II course. At the end of the semester you will have to attempt a written exam. The functional ecology II course comprises a four-week block for conducting own experiments. Those experiments will be planned, executed and analysed by the participants. You will present your approach and results to all participants of both courses and defend your approach. Additionally, a short protocol of your findings must be handed in after the practical class. |
| Target Group |
M.Sc. Biodiversity, Ecology & Evolution
M.Sc. Biodiversität und Ökologie
M.Sc. Landschaftsökologie und Naturschutz
M.Sc. Landscape Ecology and Nature Conservation
M.Sc. Umweltwissenschaften |
