Advances in Insect Ecology

EFB 796, Section 08, Spring 2009

Instructor: Dylan Parry

Mondays 1:50-2:45 PM; Illick 127

Office Hours: Tuesday 10:30-12:00 AM;

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

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

Textbook: None

Goals of course/overview:

We will focus on primary literature from insect ecology (both past and present). I will take a broad approach and we will look at insect ecology in a wide variety of fields. 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
12 January	Introduction to class	Syllabus	Parry
19 January	No Class – MLK Day
26 January	Plant-Herbivore Interactions	Coley et al. 1985 Kursar et al. 2006	Parry
2 February	Insect Communities: Competition	Hairston et al. 1960 Redman&Scriber 2000	Werner
9 February	Population Dynamics: Predation		Eager
16 February	Population Dynamics: Tritrophic Interactions		Rockermann
23 February	Insect Communities: Structure		Sauer
2 March	Ecological Physiology	Thompson _1998 Carroll_etal_2003	Phillips
9 March	NO CLASS	SPRING BREAK
16 March	Behavioral Ecology		Dillon
23 March	Coevolution		Werner
30 March	Mutualisms: Ant:Plant		Rockermann
6 April			Sauer
13 April	Thermoregulation		Phillips
20 April	Biogeography		Dillon
27 April	Climate Change		Eager

Weekly Participation

Your responsibilities in this class are:

• READ: For the class to be successful, you need to do the readings ahead of time.
• Develop some questions, ideas, comments on the readings
• 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 papers. 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.