How does a swarm of honeybees collectively decide on a new site for their hive? When a mother mouse protects her young, are her behaviors genetically determined? Why do ravens share food with each other? This course is an introduction to behavioral ecology, which asks why animals act the way they do, how their behaviors have been shaped by natural selection, and how these behaviors influence their surroundings. We will first discuss behaviors at the individual level, then move to reproductive behaviors. The final section of the course will focus on social evolution, the origins of cooperation, and human behavioral ecology.

This course explores the mechanisms of animal function in the contexts of evolution, ecology and behavior. We will cover the physiological bases of osmoregulation, circulation, gas exchange, digestion, energetics, motility, and neural and hormonal control of these and other processes in a variety of vertebrate and invertebrate animals, thereby revealing general principles of animal physiology as well as specific physiological adaptations to differing environments.

In this course, students will apply evolutionary theory to empirical genomic data (collected prior to this course due to COVID requirements). Working in groups remotely, teams will analyze RADseq data to address ecological and evolutionary questions. Students will also become immersed in the professional-level practices for scientific writing. We will discuss evolutionary topics through lectures, discussions, and assigned readings. The goal is that each student project could tackle a different question rooted within molecular ecology, and would produce a written scientific report formatted for a peer-review journal.

This course covers the ecology and conservation of tropical savanna communities and ecosystems. Focused on Serengeti as the classic African savanna and studies from other parts of Africa. Lectures will highlight the ecology of key groups of organisms and their interactions in Serengeti. We also look at the geological and human history of Tanzania and East Africa. We'll conclude the course by examining the central issues in the conservation of Serengeti and other savanna grasslands. We use a wide range of historical and contemporary movies; books and scientific papers to develop an intensive understanding of this iconic ecosystem.

Only six percent of Africa's land area (containing a fraction of its biodiversity) is protected, and these areas are rarely large enough to sustain 'charismatic megafauna'. Mostly, wildlife must share land with people also facing survival challenges. This course will explore how wildlife and people interact in the Ewaso Ecosystem in central Kenya where new approaches to conservation are being developed. Lectures will cover the ecology of tropical grasslands and first principles underlying the forces shaping biodiversity patterns. Projects will examine the dynamics between human actions and biodiversity patterns.

This course will cover genomic tools that can be used to study ecology and evolution in the field. Students will use the latest sequencing technologies (Illumina and Oxford Nanopore) to study ecological communities. Together, the students will design a set of studies that will use molecular barcoding to assess the composition of both animal and bacterial communities. They will analyze target samples for our experiments, and then they will extract DNA, amplify target loci, and analyze the resulting data. This course is offered as part of the Kenya semester program.

How do genes and neural circuits encode behavior? How have genes and circuits evolved to generate the incredible diversity of behaviors we see across the animal kingdom? This course will explore these questions with emphasis on recent advances in the primary literature. Each class will focus on a specific behavior with a lecture introducing what is known about its genetic and neural basis followed by a discussion of a paper that builds on that knowledge to examine how the behavior evolves. A major goal of the class will be to learn how to critique contemporary research, generate new hypotheses, and design experiments to test those hypotheses.

Students will gain sophisticated training in biological research on African animals and ecosystems. In addition to this training, participants will observe and study organisms ranging from acacia ants to giraffes, go-away-birds to zebras. The course is designed to give students a broad understanding of ecology, evolution, and conservation. Lectures include core topics in ecology and evolution. Students will gain experience with experimental design, data collection, and analysis. Limited to students in the Tropical Biology and Sustainability Program in Kenya.

Intensive three week field course during December/January in a suitable tropical locality. Readings, discussions, and individual projects. The content and location are varied to suit the needs of the participants. Travel TBD based on University travel regulations. Should the travel ban continue, students will work to organize a symposium around a critical and "hot topic" in ecology and evolutionary biology.

Discussion of the central problems of population biology and approaches that have proved fruitful. Topics ranging throughout ecology, evolution, biogeography, and population genetics are usually related to presentations by visiting speakers and students. (This is a core course.)

Humans are increasingly affecting environmental systems throughout the world. To understand the environmental impacts, quantitative modeling tools are needed. This course introduces quantitative modeling approaches for environmental systems, including global models for carbon cycling; local and regional models for water, soil, and vegetation interactions; models for transport of pollutants in both water and air; and models for population dynamics and the spread of infectious disease. Students will develop simple models for all of these systems and apply the models to a set of practical problems.

Food fuels us and our diets connect us with nature at many scales. Yet most of us poorly understand how food is produced and how production processes impact our diets, health, livelihoods and the environment. By the course's end, students will better understand the ethical, environmental, economic, social and medical implications of their food choices. Food production methods ranging from hunting, fishing and gathering to small and large scale crop and animal farming will be examined through lenses of ethics, ecology, evolutionary biology, geography, political economy, social dynamics, physiology, climate change and sustainability.

The study of microbial biogeochemistry and microbial ecology. Beginning with the physical/chemical characteristics and constraints of microbial metabolism, we will investigate the role of bacteria in elemental cycles, in soil, sediment and marine and freshwater communities, in bioremediation and chemical transformations.

This required course for GHP students focuses on the distribution and determinants of disease. Diverse methodological approaches for measuring health status, disease occurrence, and the association between risk factors and health outcomes will be presented via classic and contemporary studies of chronic and infectious illness. The core underlying ecological and evolutionary drivers of human health will be introduced. Emphasis on: causal inference, study design and sampling, bias and confounding, the generalizability of research, infectious disease dynamics, health policy and global health.

The completion of the human genome and the continuing effort to sequence tens of thousands of human genomes is yielding unprecedented insights into human biology and the evolutionary history of our species. We will review the key advances enabling researchers to decipher the structure and function of the human genome as well as the genetic basis of variation among individuals and populations. Topics include the evolutionary origins and current structure of human populations, methods for detecting genomic features, cancer genomics and mapping the genes and variants underlying population-specific adaptations and disease susceptibility.

Important concepts and elements of molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, and cell biology, are examined in an experimental context. This course fulfills the basic biology requirement for students majoring in the biological sciences and satisfies the basic biology requirement for entrance into medical school and most other health professions schools.