Tropical Biodiversity & Lab
BIOL 122 (2) & 123 (1)

 

This course will introduce students to the scientific study of biodiversity in the Neotropics.  We will travel to a diversity of natural biological communities including rainforests, coastal communities, coral reefs, freshwater streams, and cloud forest. 
 

An emphasis of this class will be to examine effects of modern land-use patterns on the distribution and abundance of species.  We will visit agricultural areas used for intensive cultivation of major export crops including coffee and chocolate.  One assignment will be for each student to research an economically important agricultural product and report to the class on the environmental impacts associated with it.

Another of the goals of the course is to provide students with an opportunity to develop hypotheses about tropical systems and design specific experiments to test such hypotheses.  To that end, students will participate in guided research with faculty.  Students are then required to develop their own ideas and figure out ways of testing those ideas.

 

This course satisfies the University Core requirement for a Natural Science Elective and the core requirement for a Scientific Perspective course. The course cannot count for both.