| Date | Topic | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 8 | Introduction; logistics; ecology as a scientific endeavor | |
| Jan 15 | Invisible colleges; levels of organization; tools for ecological investigations | Wiens 1995; McIntosh 1980 pp. 11-17; McPherson & DeStefano chapter 1 |
| Jan 22 | Ecological interactions | McPherson & DeStefano chapter 2 |
| Jan 29 | Discuss hypotheses & interactions | Cable; Yeaton et al.; Gurevitch; Wilson & Keddy; Mahall & Callaway; Bertness & Shumway; Wilson & Tilman; Briones et al; Heppell et al. |
| Feb 5 | Community concept; data collection | McPherson & DeStefano chapter 3 |
| Feb 8 (Saturday) | All-day field trip | McAuliffe & Burgess 1995 |
| Feb 12 | De-brief from field trip; discuss data collection on future field trip | |
| Feb 19 | Exam 1 due; similarity measures; direct gradient analysis | McPherson & DeStefano chapter 3; Dix & Smeins 1967 |
| Feb 26 | Principal components analysis | McPherson & DeStefano chapter 3 |
| Mar 5 | Reciprocal averaging; detrended correspondence analysis | McPherson & DeStefano chapter 3 |
| Mar 8 (Saturday) | All-day field trip | |
| Mar 19 | De-brief from field trip; Cluster analysis; TWINSPAN; discriminant analysis | McPherson & DeStefano chapter 3; Williams 1983 |
| Mar 26 | Dominance/diversity relations; group discussion of analyses | |
| Apr 2 | Equitability measures; dominance/diversity models | McPherson & DeStefano chapter 3 |
| Apr 9 | Models of succession | McPherson & DeStefano chapter 4 |
| Apr 16 | Paper due; studying succession; managing succession | |
| Apr 23 | Return & discuss paper; future of ecology | McPherson & DeStefano chapter 5 |
| May 1 | Course evaluation |