General Information

University of New Mexico

Biology 511 -- Macroecology

Spring 2017

T/Th 1100-1215h

General Information

Instructor: Felisa A. Smith, Professor

Office: 1462 Castetter (PiBBs suite, first floor of Biology Building)

Office hours:  Tuesdays 3:15-5 “ish” (unless we have a faculty meeting), or just stop by and see if I’m busy.

The course.

My philosophy is that graduate training is about guiding you along the transition from learning about science, which is mostly what you did as an undergrad, to actually doing your own science, which is what you are likely to be doing for the rest of your career. Ideally, this class will stimulate your creativity and sharpen your critical and analytical skills. So, I have two goals for the semester. First, I’d like you to develop a deep and widespread knowledge of the macroecological approach to science, which is an increasingly important and fruitful way to address broad and synthetic questions. I’m a fan. The best way to accomplish this is involves reading and understanding the seminal literature. So, that’s what we’ll do. The course will be structured around discussions of the foundational literature, in what I hope will be a lively, informal and productive atmosphere. Count on 2-4 papers per week; mostly short. The majority will be drawn from the Foundations of Macroecology, a new book in the University of Chicago Press’ Foundations series, which contains both commentaries and reprints of seminal papers. We’ll also refer to Jim Brown’s Macroecology book, available in paperback at the bookstore or quite cheaply via Amazon. When you read these papers, I’d like you to not only focus on the content, but on the context – who was this person(s), what type of expertise did they have, how did they develop the ideas, why are they so important, and so forth.

Second, I’d like you to actually do macroecology. Thus, you will be conducting and writing up a macroecological project on a topic of your choice. Whilst a bit painful, this will provide hands-on experience in macroecological research -that is, asking an appropriate question, designing a study, and compiling, analyzing, and interpreting data. This project should represent original scientific research on some topic related to macroecology. I do not expect new field or laboratory work. In fact, I’d discourage this since you really won’t have the time to do it well. But you may have access to interesting data from previous work by yourself or others, and certainly, the literature and web are replete with data that can be used to address interesting questions. Mathematical or computer modeling studies are also possibilities.  Collaborative efforts are fine, but run it by me first. We will spend some time at various points talking or working con your projects – how you might get an idea, where data might be, how to analyze and present, etc.

Papers should be written in a form suitable for submission to Global Ecology and Biogeography. Please adhere to journal standards. This means that all elements of the paper, including the references, tables and figures must be in the appropriate format. The goal of this exercise is to give you a chance to try your hand at some original research.

Papers are due on may 5th!

Grading.

This is a graduate course, so I expect all students to participate fully, work hard, and do well. Grading is based on the idea that I expect grad students to get “A”s; lower grades indicate increasingly mediocre performance.

Course Texts.

Smith, F.A., J.L. Gittleman and J.H. Brown, J.H. 2014. Foundations of Macroecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Brown, J.H. 1995. Macroecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (Optional)