Advances in Insect Ecology Instructor: Dylan Parry

EFB 796, Spring 2010 Mondays 1:50-2:40 PM; Illick 127

Office Hours: Tuesday 10:30-12:30;

Contact Information: 109 Illick; 470-6753; dparry@esf.edu

Course Website: http://www.esf.edu/efb/parry/insect-ecology.htm

Goals of course/overview:

We will focus on primary literature from insect ecology (past and present). Where possible, we will emphasize a seminal or highly cited paper in a field and pair it with recent papers in the same field of study. The object is to examine how a foundational or key paper has shaped subsequent research in a field, to look at how our knowledge has changed, and how current understanding and focus is different or similar) to that in the original paper. In some of the newer fields this will be more difficult because the state of knowledge is in flux and may be advancing rapidly.

Each student will lead a discussion on a topic of their choosing (within the structure of the class below). We will read 2 papers for each class. Guidelines for discussion leaders are below the topic sequence.

DATE	TOPIC	READING	LEADER
25 January	Introduction to class	Syllabus	Dylan Parry
1 February	Plant-Herbivore Interactions	Coley et al. 1985 Kursar et al. 2006	Dylan Parry
8 February	Insect Communities: Competition	Hairston et al. 1960 Hudson and Stiling 1997	Max Collignon
15 February	Population Dynamics	Hunter and Price (1992) Hunter et al. 1997	Daniel Cucera
22 February	No Class
1 March	Population Dynamics: Tritrophic Interactions	Price et al. 1980 Kruess 2002	Jonathan Cale
8 March	Insect Communities: Structure	Lawton and Strong 1981 Smith et al. 2008	Chris Standley
15 March	Spring Break
22 March	Ecological Physiology	Campbell et al. 1974 Roy et al. 2002	Kimberly Deane
29 March	Mutualisms	Chapela et al. 1994 Currie et al. 2006	Dominick Skabeikis
5 April	Behavioral Ecology	Lloyd 1965 Demary et al. 2006	Jose Valdez
12 April	Thermoregulation	Digby 1955 O’Donnell and Foster 2001	Jacquiline Bilello
19 April	Biogeography	Simberloff and Wilson 1970 Kruess and Tscharntke 2000	Anne Schlesinger
26 April	Climate Change	Parmesan et al. 1999 Schwieger etal. 2008	Warren Hellman

Weekly Participation

Your responsibilities in this class are:

• READ: For the class to be successful, you need to do the readings ahead of time.
• By 6:00 pm Sunday each week, submit to me via e-mail one question from each paper that you would like to see answered in discussion.
• I will forward these to the discussion leader to facilitate discussion
• Participate in asking and answering questions in class
• Co-lead discussion during one week (see below)
• The purpose of this class is to become familiar with classic or seminal papers in the field of insect ecology and examine how they have shaped contemporary thinking. Your objective is to read the papers and develop an understanding of how the original paper set the standard in a field and how the field has grown and changed, and whether or not the original paper has withstood the test of time.

Discussion Leader

Decide how you want to run the class; a combination of review of the main features of your papers and either discussion or other activity is good.  Don’t spend all your time reviewing (presumably we have all read the papers and a quick encapsulation should be sufficient).  Use your imagination – make it interesting!

• The week before you lead discussion, provide me with your paper(s). It is critical that you have read your papers and selected carefully. Nothing kills discussion like a poor paper choice
• As discussion leader, you need to not only be familiar with your chosen papers, but will need to read additional references that relate to the topic.
• You may want to hand out some questions for the class to think about while they read the papers you have selected.

Your grade will come from your participation (50%) and your discussion leadership (50%)