Biology 374: Biogeography
This course will examine patterns of biodiversity, species distributions, island biogeography, the role of the Earth’s history in shaping modern species distributions, and the impact of current climate change and land use change on future species distributions. Each week students will read foundational papers in Biogeography. We will then read a recent paper that touches on the questions raised in the foundational papers, with the idea of identifying both which foundational hypotheses have been well tested and, perhaps more interestingly, which have not. By discussing the latest primary literature, students will learn how to unite concepts and information from ecology, evolutionary biology, geology, and physical geography to answer questions of importance to modern society. The lab section of the course will be focused on learning GIS techniques and how they are applied to biologically interesting questions. Students will author an original research project applying the skills learned in lab to a relevant hypothesis discussed in class.