Unit ECOLOGY
- Course
- Biological sciences
- Study-unit Code
- 55501008
- Curriculum
- In all curricula
- Teacher
- Antonia Concetta Elia
- Teachers
-
- Antonia Concetta Elia
- Hours
- 56 ore - Antonia Concetta Elia
- CFU
- 8
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2021
- Offered
- 2022/23
- Learning activities
- Caratterizzante
- Area
- Discipline botaniche, zoologiche, ecologiche
- Academic discipline
- BIO/07
- Type of study-unit
- Obbligatorio (Required)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa monodisciplinare
- Language of instruction
- Italian
- Contents
- Autoecology and sinecology- Ecological system - Limiting factors. Adaptation
-Ecological Niche. Population ecology, Interactions R/K selection.
Speciation -Community - Energy flux. Productivity. Matter cycles. Ecological
succession -Biomes. - Reference texts
- Smith TM, Smith RL. 2017. Elementi di Ecologia. Pearson. Benjamin Cummings. Economic edition. IX edition.
Odum & Barrett: fondamenti di Ecologia, ed. Piccin 2007 - Educational objectives
- The course aims to provide basic knowledge of theoretical ecology for understanding the functioning of ecosystems. The principles and methods which underlie ecology help students to understand the processes of environmental change and human impacts on the biosphere.
- Prerequisites
- In order to be able to understand Ecology course, the students must have successfully passed the exams of matematic, zoology,botany and inorganic chemistry. Knowledge of these courses is a mandatory prerequisite for attending and not attending students. Moreover, basic knowledge of mathematics and statistics are useful to easy understand some topics in the course.
- Teaching methods
- Ecology course is held with lectures on the topics of the course. The presented concepts will be integrated, where possible, with examples and/or exercises to facilitate the understanding. Any intermediate tests will be useful tools to evaluate the degree of understanding of the contents developed during the course.
- Other information
- Attendance to the course: Recommended
- Learning verification modality
- The final exam is provided by an oral examination. It will be evaluated: level of preparation on the program carried out, level of advanced topics, ability to reason, as well as language and terminology appropriate to ecology.
- Extended program
- Introduction to Ecology; Levels of organization; Autoecology and synecology; ecology History; Systemic studies; Hierarchical theory; statistical considerations in ecology; Classification of ecological data; Environmental system; Emergent, collective and transcendent properties; Ecological factors: light, oxygen, temperature, water, climate, micro and macro, nutrients, soil, fire, carbon dioxide, pH, salinity; Resources and conditions; systemic and non-systemic Environment; Classes of naturalness; Unitary and modular organisms; Biological cycles; Limiting factors; Ecological valence; Allee theory; Optimal and saturation response; Reaction norm; Ecological space; Habitat; Ecological equivalents; Population: natality, mortality, density, dispersion and distribution of populations, Aggregation, refuges, territory, insulation; age distribution, diagrams of time age; Life tables and survival curves; Population dynamics; Carrying capacity; Environmental resistance; biotic potential; growth curves; r/K Species; Positive and negative interactions: Commensalism-protocooperation; Mutualism and symbiosis, intraspecific and interspecific competition; Ecological niche; Principle of competitive exclusion (Gausse); prediction models of Lotka and Volterra for competition and predation; functional response of predator; Parasitism; Ecological genetic; Adaptation; Cryptic process; mimicry; natural selection; micro- and macroevolution; allopatric and sympatric speciation; co-evolution; community characteristics; species diversit;, community structure; Diagram rank-abundance; Succession; theory of intermediate disturbance; theory of island biogeography; Ecosystem, Energy Flow; primary and secondary productivity, Photosynthesis and assimilation, trophic chains, ecological efficiency and trophic efficiency, ecological pyramids, food webs, predators key and cascading effects, ecosystem, Succession autotrophic and heterotrophic, stability and resilience; Biogeochemical cycles: water, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, carbon; General concepts of Landscape Ecology; terrestrial and aquatic biomes.