Speciation
Ecology 525 - Speciation
Spring 2007
Class time: Tuesdays, 3:00 - 5:30 pm
Location: LSS 340
Credit hours: 2 units
Professor: Michael Nachman
BioSciences West Bldg., Rm. 334
Phone: 626-4595
Email: nachman@u.arizona.edu
Office hours: Friday 2-3, or by appointment
General theme: Overview of several major topics in speciation with particular emphasis on genetic aspects of speciation
Text: Coyne, J.A., and Orr, H.A. 2004, Speciation, Sinauer Press, Sunderland, MA.
Course website: http://www.eebweb.arizona.edu/Courses/Ecol525/Home.html (maintained by Ming Beckwith, Administrative Assistant, her email is: genomics@email.arizona.edu).
Organization and requirements:
(1) Ecology 525 will be run largely as a seminar. The first meeting will be a lecture, but all other class meetings will be run as a discussion. Each student will lead one discussion, but everyone is expected to participate in all discussions. You are strongly encouraged to ask questions if you do not understand something. Please do not hesitate to speak up even if you think that your question is naive. But you also need to come to class prepared. This is a graduate level class and will be taught by the Socratic method, as needed, to draw out participation. This means you may be called on to explain key concepts from the readings to the rest of the class. Come prepared, both by reading the material and thinking carefully about it.
(2) The readings for this class consist of the text by Coyne and Orr as well as readings from the primary literature (see below). All students must read the required material before each class.
(3) A basic knowledge of evolution is assumed. For example, everyone is expected to be familiar with the basic concepts of the textbook Evolutionary Biology by Douglas Futuyma. If you have not taken a course in evolution, you should read chapters 15 and 16 of this book immediately. They are available as pdf files on the course website.
(4) Each student (or pair of students) will lead a discussion on a topic from the list below. Students will conduct a literature search on the chosen topic and make two or three key references available to the entire group at least one week in advance of the presentation. These papers will form the basis of a general discussion and will be available as pdf files on the class website. Participants must consult with me over choice of papers. I will meet with each student at least twice before their presentation, once two weeks in advance, and once one week in advance. You should conduct a literature search on your topic before the first meeting with me and you should come to this meeting with some suggestions for papers for the class discussion.
(5) When leading a discussion, students should prepare an overview of the general topic (largely from the Coyne and Orr text) as well as an overview of the specific papers. This overview should include an outline of key points, tables or illustrations, a bibliography of relevant papers, and a list of questions to generate discussion. This overview should be xeroxed and made available for all participants at the beginning of each session. The readings from the text by Coyne and Orr will serve as a useful background to our discussion of individual papers.
(6) To facilitate discussions, all students are required to turn in a one-page summary for each assigned article every week. These summaries should describe (1) the main question being addressed, (2) what the authors did, (3) what the authors found, (4) the significance of the findings. In addition, each one-page statement should include two or three questions for discussion.
(7) Where appropriate for each of the topics listed, I would like to see a broad-based discussion that includes relevant theory, some assessment of the appropriateness of the theory, empirical studies, and potential tests of existing hypotheses. This course is not intended to be a complete survey of major issues in speciation, but rather a sampling of particular topics of interest to the participants.
(8) Each student will write a short research proposal on some aspect of speciation, due May 1. This proposal should take the form of an NSF dissertation improvement grant and reflect a realistic research program that could be completed in three years. The proposal must be no longer than six pages single-spaced. Emphasis should be on the biological questions to be addressed and not on methodological detail. Be creative! Each student will present her/his research idea in a 10 minute talk on the last day of class. A major goal of this seminar is to formulate some idea of where the field of speciation is going or should be going. The research proposal is intended to be an opportunity for each person to express what s/he thinks is the most important next step in speciation research.