Applied Population Ecology

Aim

In this course, the students will learn central concepts and theories in population ecology and understand how they relate to various applied conservation problems. After completing this course, students should be able to:

• explain how ecological systems are affected by different kinds of disturbances.
• contextualize fundamental concepts within population ecology and apply them to real ecological situations.
• perform population viability and sensitivity analyses based on ecological concepts.
• apply advanced skills in programming and statistics to solve real-world ecological problems.

Content

The course is structured around three modules. The first module takes an in-depth look at unregulated population growth, with and without both population structure and environmental stochasticity. The second module deals with population regulation under various ecological scenarios. Finally, the third module focuses on the consequences of habitat loss and fragmentation through the lens of metapopulation dynamics. Each module includes some of the history, theories, and applications of the given topic. In addition, each module includes instances of both dynamical and statistical modeling to showcase how they can be applied to help solve real-world ecological problems.