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Teaching logistic population growth and ecological modelling

Author(s): Robert F Smith

Lycoming College

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Summary:
The lesson is designed to 1) teach students about the concept of logistic population growth, growth rates, and carrying capacity and 2) provide a basic introduction to ecological modeling and quantitative thinking in ecology (i.e., theoretical…

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The lesson is designed to 1) teach students about the concept of logistic population growth, growth rates, and carrying capacity and 2) provide a basic introduction to ecological modeling and quantitative thinking in ecology (i.e., theoretical ecology)

Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 23 Jan 2019 doi:10.25334/Q4CF1M - cite this

Description

The 1st objective aligns with material presented in lecture and fits within a general ecology course’s overall structure. This specific lesson is structured to infuse quantitative concepts into the course as a means to understand basic concepts in ecology. The 2nd objective is designed to help students experience an aspect of ecology rarely covered in undergraduate courses (i.e., modelling and quantitative thinking within a framework that could be considered an introduction to theoretical ecology). The lesson will require student to perform basic coding and critical thinking when describing the different graphical outputs based on different parameter values. This lesson is designed to be a guided, inquiry-based approach with multiple educational objectives for the students.

See details on the lesson plan implementation in the attached documents.

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