BIOL 3105 Tropical Ecology and Sustainability

Ecology is the study of relationships between organisms and their environment. A study of ecology in a biological hotspot like Costa Rica is an act of sampling type of organisms and focusing on how they live and interact with other environmental elements. The approach taken in this course is to bring together students and expert faculty guides to explore tropical ecology in the Costa Rican context. Expert faculty guides will rotate into the QERC community and lead students in the study of particular ecological elements as defined by their own specialization. Students will also observe the interactions of humans, as an organism in the environment, and examine the ways humans construct relationships with the environment that foster varying degrees of sustainability. Topics may include botany, microbial biology, ornithology, herpetology, stream biology, invertebrate biology, conservation, etc.