Special Course in Plant Biology, Fall semester 2017
BSCI 4/5/70195 (3 credits)
Plant Ecology
COURSE OBJECTIVE: Plants are fundamental to our way of life. Plant ecology involves a wide variety of ecological issues, including how abiotic factors such as water, soil nutrients, and light, as well as biotic factors such as competition between plants, herbivore-plant interactions (including the effects of large mammals and insects), pollination, plant parasites (such as mistletoes) and plant pathogens constrain their abundance. We will consider first the effects on the population dynamics of individual plant species, followed by metapopulation dynamics (how populations of a species are linked by dispersal), and lastly community ecology (how plant species interact with other plant species and their herbivores).