ECOLOGICAL SCIENCES
DB 209 / EC
204 (JAN) 2:1
Evolutionary Biology
Natural selection; units of selection; adaptation; speciation; population genetics; drift and the neutral theory; sexual selection and the evolution of sex; molecular phylogenetics, molecular evolution, estimating nucleotide substitutions, homologous sequences, gene trees vs. species trees, Darwinian selection at the molecular level, gene families, applications of molecular phylogenetics PRAVEEN KARANTH
D J Futuyma,
"Evolutionary Biology" (Third Edition), Sinauer Associates, Inc., 1998.
J. Maynard
Smith, "The Theory of Evolution" ,
Masatoshi Nei, Sudhir Kumar, “Molecular
Evolution and Phylogenetics”
Dan Graur, Wen-Hsiung Li,
“Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution”
Hartl and Clark “Principles of
population genetics”
Roderic D.M. Page and Edward C.
Holmes, “Molecular Evolution: A Phylogenetic
Approach”, Blackwell Science, 1998.
David M. Hillis (Editor), Craig Moritz (Editor), Barbara K. Mable (Editor) “Molecular Systematics”
Sinauer Associates, 1996
EC 301 (AUG) 2:1
Animal
Behaviour: Mechanisms and Evolution
Classical
ethology; neuroethology: sensory processing, stimulus coding and neural maps,
learning and memory; animal communication; behaviour genetics; animal
societies; the paradox of altruism; the theory of inclusive fitness; mechanisms
of kin recognition; evolution of social behaviour.
ROHINI BALAKRISHNAN AND RAGHAVENDRA GADAGKAR
Alcock, J. Animal Behaviour - An Evolutionary approach (Sixth
Edition), Sinauer Associates, 1998.
Camhi, J.M. Neuroethology, Sinauer Associates, 1984.
Krebs, J.R., and
Gadagkar, R. Survival Strategies -
Cooperation and Conflict in Animal Societies.
EC
302 (AUG) 2:1
Plant–Animal
Interactions (Ecology, Behaviour and Evolution)
The
sensory biology of the interaction between plants, their animal mutualists and
parasites: vision, chemoreception, olfaction; energetics of plant–animal
interactions; nectar, floral and vegetative scents and pollen chemistry; stable
isotopes in the study of plant–animal interactions; mate choice in plants;
evolution of floral and fruit traits; phenotypic plasticity and inducible defenses
in plants; behavioural and physiological processes in generalist and specialist
herbivores, pollinators and seed dispersers; co-evolutionary dynamics of
symbiosis, mutualisms and arms races
RENEE M BORGES
Chittka L and J. D. Thompson (Eds). Cognitive Ecology of Pollination – Animal Behaviour and Floral
Evolution.
Herrera, C. M. and O. Pellmyr (Eds).
Plant–Animal Interactions: An Evolutionary Approach. Blackwell Publishing, 2002.
Tollrian R. and C. Drew Harvell (Eds). The Ecology and
Evolution of Inducible Defenses.
Baluska, F., and Ninkovic, V (Eds). Plant Communication from
an Ecological Perspective. Springer, 2010
EC
304 (AUG) 1:0
Advanced
methods in molecular phylogenetics
Bayesian approach to tree building,
historical biogeography, phylogeography, character evolution, molecular clock
and dating nodes, DNA networks. This is a seminar course.
Prerequisite: EC204
PRAVEEN
KARANTH
EC 305
(JAN) 2:1
Quantitative
Ecology: models, research design, and inference
Alternative views of the scientific
method; framing ecological questions; types and uses of ecological models; elements
of study design; confronting ecological models with data; understanding the
nature of data; frequentist, likelihood, and Bayesian frameworks for
statistical inference; statistical modeling strategies; model selection and
multimodel inference model validation. This course will combine lectures with
hands-on sessions using R and will culminate in projects.
Kavita
Isvaran
Hilborn, R, and Mangel, M. The
Ecological Detective: Confronting Models with Data.
Bolker, B. Ecological Models and
Data in R. Princeton University Press,
Kokko, H. Modeling for Field Biologists and other interesting people.