COURSES (2007-2008)
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.
Wilson. E.O., Insect Societies Harvard
University Press 1971.
Krebs, J.R., and Davis N.B. (Eds.),
Behavioural Ecology - An Evolutionary
Approach. (Fourth Edition), Blackwell Scientific Publication, 1997.
Gadagkar, R. Survival Strategies -
Cooperation and Conflict in Animal Societies. Harvard University Press (1997).
EC 302 (AUG) 2:1
Plant-animal interactions (Ecology,
Behaviour and Evolution)
Visual and chemical communication between plants and their animal mutualists: pollinators, seed dispersers, parasites of herbivores; mate choice in plants; evolution of floral and fruit traits; phenotypic plasticity and inducible defences in plants; behavioural and physiological processes in generalist and specialist herbivores; 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.
Cambridge University Press, 2001
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. Princeton University Press, 1999.
EC202 (AUG) 2:0
Community ecology and biogeography
History
and science of community ecology and biogeography; species distributions; distribution
of communities; community organization; historical patterns and processes;
island biogeography; metapopulation biology; measurement of diversity;
commonness and rarity; diversity in space and time; macroecological
perspectives of diversity, range size, abundance and body size.
KARTIK SHANKER
A.E. Magurran. “Measuring Biological Diversity” Blackwell Publishing. 2004.
J.H. Brown and M.V. Lomolino.
“Biogeography” (Second Edition). Sinauer Associates, Inc., 1998.
K.J.
Gaston & T.M. Blackburn. “Patterns and Processes in Macroecology” Blackwell
Science, 1998.
EC101 (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 (now EC304)
PRAVEEN KARANTH
EC 303 (JAN) 2:1
Conservation Biology
Biological
diversity, genetic diversity, species diversity, ecosystem diversity; Genetic
variation and evolution; Genetics and conservation; single species
conservation; minimum viable populations, Ecosystem conservation, design of
nature reserves, climate change and conservation, social context of
conservation.
R SUKUMAR
Soule, M.E, and Wilcox B.A. (Eds),
Conservation Biology; An evolutionary perspective, Sinauer Associates. 1980
Soule, M.E,(Ed), Conservation Biology; The
Science of Scarcity and Diversity, Sinauer Associates, 1986.
Western, D. and Pearl M, (Eds.)
Conservation for the Twenty-first Century. Oxford University Press, 1989.
Gadgil, M. and Guha, R. Ecology and
Equity. Penguin.
Lovejoy, T.E. and Hannah, L. (Eds.)
Climate Change and Biodiversity, Yale University Press. 2006.
EC 304 (JAN) 2:1
Evolutionary Biology
History of evolutionary ideas; 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.
PRAVEEN
KARANTH
D J Futuyma, "Evolutionary Biology" (Third
Edition), Sinauer Associates, Inc., 1998.
R Dawkins,,"The Blind
Watchmaker", W.W. Norton & Co., 1986.
J. Maynard Smith, "The
Theory of Evolution" , Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Masatoshi
Nei, Sudhir Kumar, “Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics”
Dan
Graur, Wen-Hsiung Li, “Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution”
EC305 (JAN) 2:1
Quantitative Ecology:
Models, Research design, and Inference
Alternative views of the scientific method; framing ecological questions; types and uses of models; issues in research design; confronting ecological models with data; understanding the nature of data; frequentist, likelihood, and Bayesian frameworks for statistical inference; model selection and validation. This course will combine lectures and discussions with hands-on sessions using R and will culminate in group projects.
KAVITA ISVARAN
Hilborn, R, and Mangel, M. The
Ecological Detective: Confronting Models with Data. Princeton University Press,
Princeton. 1997.
Bolker, B. Ecological Models
and Data in R. Princeton University Press, Princeton. in press.