Management and Ecology of Animal Populations

Code: BIO08101M

6 ECTS

Duration: 15 weeks/162 hours

Scientific Area: Biology

Teaching languages: Portuguese

Languages of tutoring support: Portuguese

Sustainable Development Goals

Educação de qualidade - Assegurar a educação inclusiva, e equitativa e de qualidade, e promover oportunidades de aprendizagem ao longo da vida para todos.

Learning Goals

Identify population traits. Know biotic and abiotic factors that limit population's growth, as either density-independent or density-dependent, direct or indirectly. Understanding regulation processes of populations. Apply survivorship analysis and life tables. Perception of populations interactions and its effects on populations and communities, such as between two trophic levels (predation, parasitism, parasitoidism), interspecific competition and mutualism. Apply deterministic, stochastic and simulation models for population's growth, for one population or linking two trophic levels or competing populations. Applying ecological concepts on population management: exploitation, conservation, pest management and management of invasive populations.

Definition of populations. Abiotic and biotic factors, density-dependent or density-independent, direct or indirect. Sampling and monitoring methods. Life cycles and life tables. Survivorship analysis. Demographic strategies. Processes of population regulation. Intra-specific relationships: cooperation, reproduction, competition. Effects of reproductive isolation, on the genetic structure of populations. Population growth models, density-independent and density-dependent. Stochastic mechanisms. Age structure models, Leslie matrix. Inter-specific relationships. Inter-specific competition and its modeling. Predation: Prey selectivity; optimal foraging; functional and numerical responses to prey density. Predator-prey models. Parasitism and parasitoidism. Host-parasite interactions, evolution of resistance and virulence. Co-evolution. Animal population management: Sustainable harvesting; conservation and meta-population theory; pest management, management of invasive species.

Teaching Methods

The teaching methodologies are structured in three main types of classes. Oral presentations addressing theoretical aspects of each topic. Practical lessons in a computer lab, allowing the application of theoretical concepts through modeling exercises and data analysis, such as building life tables, survival analysis, modeling population growth, simulation of different management strategies on population growth and sustainability. Theoretical-practical classes, based on the critical discussion of scientific articles about different topics. Presentations of the theoretical classes as well as all scientific articles discussed are available as pdf format, on the course webpage. Students will be evaluated on both theoretical (one or two tests, in the form of quick questions and a composition question) and practical (reports of the practical lessons, done either in group or individually, and the presentation of a case study based in a scientific research, done individually) components.