Biology 129 Jeff Schloss
Tropical Ecology Mayterm 1996
COURSE SYLLABUS
Course Description :
What is this course?
Upper division examination of general ecological principles, as they underlie
the unique structural and functional characteristics of tropical ecosystems.
Emphasis on environmental biophysics and climatology; energy balance and
ecophysiological adaptation; plant/animal interactions; chemical & behavioral
ecology; and specific threats to ecological integrity of local communities.
Intensive exposure to field methodolgy, including student research projects.
(Upper Division, for Biology / Environmental Science majors; prerequisites;
one year college biological or environmental science, one year college chemistry,
and one semester college mathematics).
Course Rationale :
Why study ecology?
First, because the ecological perspective is an integrative view of the
ultimate implementation of all biological function - from the physiological
to the behavioral. You don't really understand living things until you understand
how life is adapted - adapted not only to homeostatic challenges
raised by the environment, but also to challenges of reproduction, dispersal,
predation, competition, etc. As biology majors you have seen, through the
lens of other biological subdisciplines, organisms rehearsing their lines;
in ecology you see "the play."
Second, because ecological issues stand to critically influence the quality
and even viability of your life and those you love. Nuclear winter, acid
rain, population growth, species extinction, agricultural sustainability,
global climate change, deforestation/desertification, toxic wastes, and
any one of a host of other processes may challenge the long term integrity
of the very biosphere. Never before in the history of western science has
there been such an international and interdisciplinary consensus on the
critical importance of issues, plus the relevance of an academic discipline
to their amelioration.
Third, because ecology can contribute to your sheer enjoyment of the natural
world and your ability both to more deeply appreciate and to more effectively
serve the God who created it. Being equipped to perceive subtle distinctions
and recognize natural order evokes delighted praise and confers stewardly
competence. Yet such equipping is rare - most of us are less aware of the
exquisite natural transitions along a simple trip up into the mountains,
the daily changes in a forest or stream as a season progresses, the agonizing
deterioration of communities subject to local or global perturbation, than
we are of new releases in the movies, shifts in fashion, fluctuating investment
opportunities, developments in the lives of professional athletes or entertainers.
The fact is, there is tremendous cultural pressure for our lives to revolve
around the contrivances of culture rather than the handiwork of God. Ecology
(though not ecology uniquely) entails thinking earnestly about not only
the things we fill our lives with, but also the processes we draw our lives
from. In so doing, this systematic study of the natural world equips us
to be more effective stewards of creation and more passionate celebraters
of Christ, Who works next to God, as a master craftsman, rejoicing in the
world, His earth. (Proverbs 8:30-31)
Course Location:
Why the tropics?
There are a number of reasons why the tropcs represent not only an excellent,
but a unique, perhaps even ideal site for a field course. First off, the
tropcs contain orders of magnitude greater biological diversity than temperate
systems. This not only presents us with a vast array of compellingly interesting
material for study, but it represents in itself a central and unsolved question
in ecology: why is there greater species diversity in the tropics? Second,
the tropics have figured so very prominently in the historical development
of field biology. In fact, natural history (biogeography), ecology, and
evolutionary biology all came into their own as scientific disciplines,
concomitant with the exploration of tropcal systems by Darwin, Wallace,
and other biologists a century ago. In the view of many, the tropics continue
to harbor the power to inspire new paradigmatic perspectives. Third, the
tropcs are critically important to global biogeochemical and atmospheric
processes, and are of untold importance to human ecology & economics;
yet their ecological integrity is uniquely threatened. Fourth, importance
of the tropics notwithstanding, they are still woefully understudied compared
to temperate systems, and doubly so, considering how much more diverse they
are. Fifth, in terms of not only the seasonal & dirunal rhythms of biological
activity, but also the spaital availability of extraordinarily varied communities,
there is, in one sense, "more to see". And it is rivettingly beautiful.
Course Objectives :
Where are we going?
Disciplinary Content:
With appropriate investment on your part, and some grace for both instructor
and students, at the end of the course, you will be able to recognize and
describe the fundamental principles, important models, and central observations
of biophysical/physiological, population, and community ecology; you will
also have an understanding of and appreciation for the provocative and significant
issues in behavioral and human ecology. You will be able:
1. In biophysical ecology, to explain mathematical models for how the exchange
of light,
moisture and temperature between organisms and environment determines the
varieties
and distributions of species and biomes in our world, and the tropics in
particular.
2. In physiological ecology, to describe how different organisms' functional
adaptations
constitute strategic responses to fundamental homeostatic challenges raised
by the tropical environment (e.g., temperature and water regulation; resource
budgets).
3. In population ecology, to mathematically describe how population growth
relates to environmental limitations, competition, and predation; to conceptually
explain how coevolution and life history relate to tropical patterns of
distribution and abundance.
4. In community ecology, to explain current theories of community productivity,
energy flow, nutrient cycling, ecological niche, and succession; to describe
current theories of and controversies over community integration, diversity/stability,
GAIA/steady-state dynamics, and to describe differences between temperate
and tropcal systems.
5. In evolutionary/behavioral ecology, to explain how natural selection
theory relates to fundamental biological controversies about the nature
of social interaction, altruistic love, and courtship/mating behavior, and
how observations in the tropics contribute so significantly to such theories.
6. In human ecology, to describe the theoretical and applied dimensions
of controversies over desertification, tropical deforestation, acid rain,
global warming, species extinction, genetic diversity, agricultural sustainability,
population growth, and the neomalthusian controversy.
Analytic Skills & Field Methodology:
You will have gained foundational familiarity with the basic instruments
& techniques of ecological field work, general experience with fundamentals
of experimental design and statistical analysis, and an introduction to
state-of-the-art approaches in biocomputing and environmental instrumentation.
You should be able
7. To skillfully use a variety of quantitative sampling and environmental
monitoring techniques for both describing ecological communities and testing
hypotheses about them.
8. To explain the function of and knowledgeably use advanced instrumentation
in environmental biophysics and ecophysiology.
9. To used computers in both the digitally-interfaced acquisition of data
and the graphical & statistical analysis of gathered data.
10 To identify and describe the natural history of dominant or indicator
species; to recognize and describe the major community types in the areas
visited.
Tropical Applications:
You will have a concrete understanding of how general ecological
principles are reflected in the structure and function of tropical ecosystems,
how the dynamics of tropcal systems compare to their temperate counterparts,
and what theoretical and applied issues characterize a variety of specific
tropical communities we examine. You should be able
11. To identify the dominant and indicator species, describe general ecological
characteristics and environmental threats in lowland rainforest, dry forest,
cloud forest, coral reef, mangrove, intertidal, freshwater aquatic, wetland,
and distrurbed communities.
12. To describe the life history patterns of plants & animals, allometric/metabolic
trends of representative species, interspecific relationships characteristic
of tropical environments.
13. To explain how tropical communities are distinquished with respect to
species diversity, primary productivity, nutrient turnover, energy flow,
and food webs & species assemblages.
14 To describe the patterns in global energy exchange that create biospheric
climate patterns and their associated distribution of major biomes, with
particular attention to the dynamics of tropical/equatorial ecosystems.
15. To discuss the global and local threats to the ecological integrity
of tropical communities.
Interdisciplinary Integration:
You will be able to discuss and evaluate prominent, sometimes controversial,
issues in ecological theory in the context of significant social, ethical,
and/or theological concerns. You should be equipped:
16 To evaluate the history and present assertions of neomalthusian theory
& world hunger from both scientific and biblical perspectives.
17 To discuss the use & misuse of biological theories of ethnicity,
particularly as applied to tropical peoples, and to analyze interactions
between such theories and scriptural values.
18. To describe (in a rudimentary way) basic trends in the historical development
of ecological science and environmental stewardship.
19. To recognize opportunities and understand the responsibility to act
as God's agent in the care and use of His good creation for His loving purposes.
That is the call of Christian stewardship.
20. The most important goal of this course is one that a teacher is ironically
powerless to make happen but which we must cooperate together
in praying for. It is:
a. To stimulate your love for what it is we're actually studying - not
just the discipline of ecology but God's creation itself.
b. To help cultivate your sense of intimacy with Jesus Christ and your desire
and competence to follow Him.
Course Strategy:
How do we get there?
To accomplish the above goals, we'll use a hybrid strategy of lectures/readings,
field/lab exercises, quizzes/examinations, and student projects/reports.
Lectures/Readings/Quizzes:
A typical day will have lecture in the morning over our text. Lectures will
be designed to introduce you to the material; you should then read the text
and handouts as necessary that evening. Lectures will often go beyond the
text with illustrative example or quantitative detail; at other times they
will leave areas of the text for you to digest on you own. Each lecture
will begin with a "feedback exercise," usually entailing a quiz
with a one or two brief questions over a) the reading for the day and b)
over the previous lecture.
Textbook/Lecture Exams:
There will be two major exams over the lectures, text, and field exercises.
Anything we cover, see, or discuss is fair game. Exams will
emphasize concepts, principles and integrative relationships. However, rigorous
knowledge of facts and terms will be essential for successful performance.
They will be primarily short-answer questions in written format, with a
few questions in objective or integrative format. In addition, there will
be a third exam at the end of the western trip covering material from your
field notebooks and material seen or discussed on the field trip.
Lab/Field Exercises:
Each day we will go into the field to explore, first hand, a principle we
discussed in lecture (or we will have time to analyze data gathered earlier
in the field). The major emphasis of our time in the field will be to introduce
you to how ecologists perceive questions, design tests, and gather &
evaluate data about hypotheses. Data collected in the field will be analyzed
back at the biological station and presented to the class the following
day. This will not only develop your analytic and critical thinking skills,
but will extend your ears to hear passages in the music of creation you
may never have heard before! The "culture medium" and comprehensive
record of all this activity will be your Field Notebook. The notebook, and
the participatory expectations necessary for a meaningful field experience,
are described in the "Investigative Protocols" appendix to this
syllabus.
Field Research Projects:
Each student will participate in a field research project conducted
by a group, in collaboration with resident biologists at our host biological
station. Selection of research topcs and assignment to groups will be done
during the first week of class, dependant in part of local field conditions.
Students will then be responsible for designing experimental approaches,
collecting data, statistically analyzing results, assessing conclusions,
and presenting their findings. The field projects are a central feature
of the course.
Field Observations and Student Presentations
In addition to the daily field exercises and major research projects, we
will take an observational field trip to a different community type at the
end of each week. Each student should record descriptive observations in
a field notebook (see below), which would include records of new species,
descriptions of community characteristics, sampling data, and observations
of animal behavior, plant/animal interactions, etc. Students will present
results of vegetation sampling and/or community analyses at subsequent class
sessions.
Course Format:
Class will meet six days per week. We will typically spend
4 days at the biological station with lecture in the morning and field exercises
in the afternoon, and data analysis & text reading in the evenings.
These will be long days. The remaining 3 days of the week will generally
involve a field trip to a site away from the station. The first two days
will involve fieldwork during the day, but no lectures or reading. The last
day, usually Sunday, you will have "off" to enjoy the local community,
with travel back to the station that evening.
The first of these four day lecture/reading sequences will be spent on campus,
with an intensive introduction to tropcal systems and completion of the
book, In the Rainforest
The next 32 days will be spent in the tropics, returning to campus for two days for a final examination and presentation of student projects. Sequence of lecture/reading topics will be integrated with those from NS13; see program itinerary for details.
Course Outcomes:
Grade: Your work in the above areas will be evaluated by mastery
protocol as commonly used in graduate level seminars, where:
High Pass (4) = mastery of conceptual content and virtually all detail.
Pass (3) = mastery of fundamental concept; recall of examples, terms, or
factual detail conceptually accurate but only partially complete.
Low Pass (2) = misunderstanding of concept exists, even though recall may
be fine.
Fail (0-1) = significant conceptual misunderstanding
Composition : Your grade will be determined by your performance
in each of the following areas. A discretionary 10% allows for evolving
class preference or weighting of distinctive performance.
20% Exam I
20% Exam II
15% Quizzes/Problem Sets
15% Field Notebook / Field Exam
15% Field Research Project
15% Presentations/Contributions
100 Total
Miscellaneous Course Policies:
Class Devotions:
Sprinkling some prayer throughout a course or singing before class
does not make a Christian College. A Christian education demands much more
than that. But to accomplish the "much more", we must achieve
at least the "that", i.e.. we are and must function as the Body
of Christ. I would like to take time each morning to exercise the privilege
of sharing together as brothers and sisters, seeking to reaffirm the context
and ultimate reason we are studying together. Please feel free - and I will
feel free to ask you - to bring a scripture, a song, a praise, prayer request;
especially appropriate are quotes reflections, or songs related to issues
we are discussing as a class or experiencing as a field community.
Academic integrity:
This class operates on the honor system. That means you are trusted
to be more committed to God's values than the desire (yours or your friends')
to earn high grades. If you are aware of a breach of integrity, you are
expected to inform the instructor or give the person the opportunity to
tell the instructor him/herself before you do so. If one does confess, a
minimum penalty may be invoked. Failure to report dishonesty will be treated
in the same fashion as the dishonesty itself. Academic dishonesty includes:
1. Cheating: using or providing unauthorized sources for an exam or piece
of work (including prohibited use of references; discussing content, approach,
or difficulty of an exam, etc.)
2. Plagiarism: submitting the work of another as your own. Quotes or data
must be given proper credit. If they're not your words, ideas, or data -
don't pretend they are!
3. Falsification: giving false information in regard to any academic undertaking
(e.g.. doctored research results, false or altered quotes, phony excuses
or forged signatures, etc.)
Class Contributions:
Hopefully you will come to experience this class more as a learning
community than as an information mill. Part of your ability to perform in
an academic setting and contribute to learning involves your ability to
communicate, cooperate, stimulate, criticize, convince, educate, argue,
contemplate, and give & receive correction in a group - i.e. to contribute
to and receive from the efforts of others to learn. Your contribution to
the class will be observed with respect to the following:
Participation: Contributions to class times, lab sessions, and field trips.
It is not merely the extrovert who excels here; it is the diligent, attentive,
and thoughtful student who is able to ask pertinent (not necessarily brilliant)
questions, volunteer appropriate comments, and give alert answers.
Collaboration: Certain attitudes are critically important to successful
scholarly collaboration, as well as Christian unity. Is the person courteous
in all intellectual exchange, or does s/he use sarcastic or ad hominem arguments?
Is the person willing to be corrected, or is s/he always right? Is s/he
willing to firmly correct error, or does s/he timidly defer to mere personality
rather than logic or fact? Is the person willing to confront and express
grievances in person, or does s/he let it generate ill feeling or criticism
behind the back of another. Does the person appear to give undue weight
to the arguments of a few others, i.e.. does s/he show favoritism with respect
to intelligence, eloquence, gender, age, personality, neediness, or is s/he
impartial?
Suggestions, questions, criticisms, praises:
Anyone who cares about their work and the people they work with -
including, maybe especially, a teacher - is constantly evaluating what succeeds
& fails, trying new approaches, and making inferences about how those
they serve are doing. I want to invite you to participate in that process.
Filling out a course evaluation at the end of the semester that affirms
what worked for you and points out what didn't - is really too late! Please
feel free to come see me if you have any questions
about policy or comments on some aspect of course structure you find helpful
or inhibitory to your learning. In fact, this is both the biblical and the
professional model for expressing your opinion: the sooner you learn to
do this, the better for you and the communities in which you participate.
This Syllabus:
There are many views of course syllabi, from legally binding contracts to simple descriptions of lecture sequences. This class syllabus is provided to serve as a summary of what I intend to do with you over the course of tthis class in order to help you learn as much as you can about Tropical Ecology - and hopefully enjoy it along the way. In a sense, it is a route map to a particular educational destination. I want to be quite clear that my commitment is to reaching that destination, not to the route, i.e., to your learning and not this syllabus. While I will not deviate from the description of this course, the grading policies, or the lecture topics in this syllabus (or the academic policies & procedures specified in Westmont College's academic handbook), I reserve the right to modify, add to, or delete field exercises or other specifics of this syllabus in response field conditions, progress (or lack thereof) in research projects, and emerging educational needs or opportunities for the class.
Instructor:
Jeffrey P. Schloss, Chair 805: 565-6118 (office phone)
Department of Biology 805: 565-6219 (lab phone)
Westmont College schloss@westmont.edu (email)
Santa Barbara, CA 93108 olive & onion (favorite pizza)
Appendix #1: INVESTIGATIVE PROTOCOL
This is a biological field course, which means a good deal
more than we are likely to spend lots of time outside. I want not only to
illustrate, but actually to derive, and enable you to derive, many of the
principles we discuss in lecture from observations of nature. The goal is
to equip you to see things in the natural world you've never seen before,
by enabling you not only to identify components but, even more importantly,
to recognize processes and perceive questions you have not conceived before.
That's a big goal. My job will be to provide you with the appropriate information,
state of the art analytic tools, and selective exposure to and interpretation
of habitats. Your job will be to give it your best, submitting to a variety
of field protocols. Specific details will be explained in class, but two
general categories will be described up front.
Field Behavior:
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink"
may be true of animals in general, but it is not true of humans. A teacher
can, in fact, create structures that effectively "make" or require
you to "drink", or do things you might otherwise not be inclined
to do. And a student can willingly or begrudgingly submit to such expectations
- knowing personal growth and heightened fulfillment, or maybe just a grade,
may result. The saying then becomes, "You can make a student drink,
but you can't make him/her enjoy it." Let's be honest - neither of
us can be sure you will truly enjoy the world this class exposes you to.
What we can be sure of, however, is that if you successfully avoid being
exposed to it, you'll assuredly miss enjoying it. Therefore I encourage
you to drink as deeply as you possibly can while in the field, savoring
the "taste" of parts of the world and ways of thinking you've
not been exposed to before.
What does that mean? That means going into the field to see as much as you
possibly can by following protocols that help rather than hinder the experience
for yourself and others in the class. Much of this is so intuitive that
it should go without saying, but differing backgrounds and personalities
of previous ecology and tropical biology students have demonstrated that
it doesn't always go without saying. Appropriate field protocol involves
the following absolute essentials, over which you will be graded:
Appendix #2: FIELD NOTEBOOKS
General Overview
Your "lab" grade will come primarily from a field notebook, which
should have four distinct and clearly marked sections. One, on the
description of techniques and instrumentation; two, on the ecological
or taxonomic descriptions of species or communities we discuss; three,
on data and analysis from our field investigations; four, a more
personal one which might be called a naturalists notebook or intellectual
journal. In the first section you should include three things for each technique
or instrument we use: its purpose, its principle of operation, and cautions
or guidelines of use. In the second section you should include a comprehensive
species list of all the plants and animals we specifically discuss or observe,
plus notes on the natural history of particular species or communities.
The third section should record all data you take with your group, notes
on how you acquired it, statistical analysis and conclusions, and reflections
on limitations or meaning of results. The fourth section is described in
below.
Naturalists Journal:
Many scientists, travelers & explorers, missionaries, political leaders,
naturalists & environmentalists and other intellectually productive
and creative people keep - and most of the persons we will study in this
class kept - journals. A journal is more than an historical or even a personal
introspective diary (although it should include elements of that). It is
a record of your intellectual development, a kind of "ships log"
to the voyage you take in the discovery of ideas and perceptions of the
world. It should be a chronicle of your thoughts, observations, feelings,
insights, connections, analyses, and conclusions related to certain ideas;
but it should also contain your unanswered questions, sources of confusion
and possible plans for resolving them. As a field notebook, or naturalists
journal, it should also be ripe with descriptions, perceptions, and observations
about the world around you.
As such it will serve as a history of your own growth, but it will also
do something much more important--it will generate growth. Analogous
to personal devotions, a journal will require you to confront your thoughts
and observations, or lack of them, in a regular disciplined fashion. Much
in education encourages us to treat our minds like many people treat a pet
dog - feed it well and give it a warm place to sleep. But a mind, like a
pet, should not be merely full and comfortable; it should be playful, quick,
curious, agile and strong. A journal will contribute to this by forcing
you to exercise and communicate with your own thoughts: you will let them
out of the pen regularly. That, along with research, will hopefully result
in an intellect that is not only well-fed, but also well-trained.
The journal, then, is to be a running record of your personal encounter
with, reflection on, reaction to, and application of the experiences of
this course. It is not just a diary, if by that term is meant
the mere record of daily life or ones emotional response to it. But note,
good intellectual work never disregards emotion or personal experience.
General Tips:
It is easy to do well on this assignment - just exercise diligence.
For the field notebook, consider taking good notes in the field as part
of the lab exercise, and view analysis of your fieldwork that evening as
part of the homework for each day. For the journalling, pick a spot where
you can be alone and commit to going there for a few minutes each day. It
is earnest steadfastness and not explosive effort that is rewarded here.
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