Which elements of ecology should be known to any ecologist reaching MSc (or early PhD) level? Following ?, we suggest to organise the topics by spatio-temporal scale (= level of organisation) from large to small. This repository aims at collecting and communicating ideas and links to resources (books, papers, MOOCs, videos) that help teaching (and learning) about a subject.
We recognise that opinions will differ about what to include as core ecological topics. Take your pick and add your ideas! This is not aiming to be prescriptive or homogenising, but fostering a common language and knowledge base.
All material presented for download is open access for non-commercial use, unless stated otherwise.
Within ecology, collaborations are key to understanding the beauty and complexity of nature, and for addressing urgent environmental problems. But how often did we experience collaborations thwarted by miscommunication and lack of a common language? We seem to work with loosely defined concepts and inconsistent vocabulary. Overcoming such problems starts with a well-trained new generation of ecologists. For them, a Canonical Ecology Curriculum is needed, focusing on core theories, seminal papers and standard methods used by ecologists.
Based on a conceptual and operational backbone, such a curriculum could be taught in graduate programmes worldwide, augmented by local examples, individual research interests and enthusiasm. It would minimize the ambiguity of what ecologists learn, while enriching our common vocabulary, reinforcing our ability to understand nature and address complex environmental issues.
We call for a global, open collaboration to collectively develop the curriculum, and make it directly usable in real-world teaching. As a starting point, we provide eight central spatiotemporal themes, ranging from molecular to global, with recommendations on target variables, theories, classical studies, methods and teaching resources.
If you are interested in joining our cause, take a look at, and comment on, the current version of our curriculum’s backbone (for more background reading see our paper in Basic and Applied Ecology):
Below the table, please link your teaching material to openly share with colleagues.
If you miss something in the curriculum, please add this topic at the bottom of the text along with a justification.
If you think something is not important enough for a core curriculum, please leave a similar note below the table to tell us why.
Only unshaded rows are developed to some extent, the others are very preliminary.
Links point to resource. Purple: advanced topics, MSc-level or higher; teal: fundamental technical skills.
| Scale | Target variables (examples) | Theory or Framework | Classics (by keyword) | Methods |
| Global | Biomass, productivity | species-energy relationship (incl. Bergmann’s Rule; ) | database skills; Model 2 regression; |
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| species occurrence; species richness | (Macroecology); island biogeography; speciation, extinction mechanisms; (animal) migration; mid-domain effect | Island radiation (Echium, Geospiza); Latitudinal gradient in species richness | (non)linear (mixed-effects) model; |
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| functional traits |
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| stoichiometry |
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| C-balance, O2-production |
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| Landscape | Patch-level population size | Landscape configuration, meta-community, meta-population; | SLOSS; fragmentation; landscape networks | GIS; remote sensing; biotelemetry; mathematical modelling |
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| species-area law; |
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| Ecosystem | C-, N-, P-pools and fluxes; water fluxes; decomposition rates; tree growth; energy density per trophic level | Nutrient cycles; energy fluxes; metabolic scaling theory; BD-EF | Biosphere 2; Duke & Harvard Forest; FLUXNET; Si-deposition from Chad in Amazon | EC-towers; decomposition bags; leaf chemistry; Earth system models; forester diagram-models; ODEs (ordinary differential equations) |
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| types of ecosystems (terrestrial, limnic, marine) |
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| Community | Richness, functional/phylogenetic/other diversity; species abundance distributions; | (modern) coexistence theory: equalising (storage, Janzen-Connell, niche differentiation) and stabilising; Temporal community dynamics (succession); | Succession: Michigan dunes, Mount Glacier forefield; | Plot sampling in the field; diversity metrics; multivariate statistics, ordination, distances and clustering; network analysis; Database skills; taxonomic expertise, meta-genomics |
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| co-occurrence patterns, beta-diversity; | Assembly rules, neutral theory; | neutral theory: BCI | stochastic coupled ODE simulations; |
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| network structure and stability | food webs; ecological networks; indirect interactions; | top-down/bottom-up: Oksanen/Fretwell/HSS; keystone species: starfish-algae: Paine; otter-kelp forest: Estes; beaver, elephants, …; frugivorous bird networks along Andean altitude gradient; |
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| Pairwise | Abundances of both species; | Continuous Lotka-Volterra competition, predation, and mutualism models; (modern) coexistence theory; parasite-host dynamics (discrete: Nicholson-Bailey, Hassall); | Competition experiment; Janzen-Connell effect; biocontrol (importance of timing); snowshoe-hare-lynx; Paramecium aurelia vs P. caudata; | Microbial/plant competition experiments in field and lab; designs for feeding trials; population monitoring; ODE/DE simulations; state/phase-space plots; game theory |
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| Functional and numerical response; | ... |
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| Tilman’s Isocline model; | ... |
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| Character/niche displacement, fundamental & realised niche; |
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| disease spread/epidemiology (SIR); | SARS-CoV2 (SIR) |
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| multiple resource model; | ... |
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| apparent competition/apparent facilitation | ... |
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| fitness; | ... | ... |
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| interaction strength | ... | ... |
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| Individual | Activity budget; movement; niche; feeding preferences; ontogenetic changes in behaviour | Individual specialisation; behavioural ecology; evolutionary game theory; allometric growth law; dynamic energy budget (incl. optimal foraging); Liebig’s law of minimum | Individual specialisation; evolution of altruistic behaviour; the logic of animal conflict | Biotelemetry; cafeteria trials; captivity experiments; mathematical modelling (ODE, DE; IBM) |
| Genes | Allele frequencies; heterozygosity | Population genetics (selection, mutation, genetic drift, gene flow); coalescent theory; landscape genetics | Drosophila and Arabidopsis; bottleneck effect; inbreeding depression; genetic drift | Behavioural observations; fitness manipulation; game theory |
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British Ecological Society “Key Concepts” reading list, covering (in sort of alphabetic order):
Advanced Ecology II, Charles University, Prague (structure and slides)