Schedule

• Week 1; 22 Jan - Intro to community diversity & biotic inventories
• Week 2; 29 Jan - Richness, abundance, & generation of biodiversity
• Week 3; 5 Feb - Evenness & broken stick diagrams
• Week 4; 12 Feb - Simple community diversity indices I
• Week 5; 19 Feb - Simple community diversity indices II
• Week 6; 26 Feb - Simple community diversity indices II
• Week 7; 5 Mar - Choosing between & improving indices (JDB away?)
• Week 8; 12 Mar - Beta diversity indices
• Week 9; 19 Mar - Spring Break
• Week 10; 26 Mar - Community ordination techniques
• Week 11; 2 Apr - Gamma diversity indices I
• Week 12; 9 Apr - Gamma diversity indices II
• Week 13; 16 Apr - Prioritizing areas for conservation
• Week 14; 23 Apr - Implementing conservation decisions
• Week 15; 30 Apr - Deadline for submission of term paper

Grading
Students will conduct weekly analyses on a data set of their choosing. Successful implementation and interpretation of the analytical techniques will be assessed via a final, comprehensive paper that integrates and interprets the analyses during this semester. The paper will be written up as a scientific paper in the format of the journal Conservation Biology and will be no more than 30 double-spaced pages.

Grading will be based on:
• Short Assignments: 20%
• Participation in class: 30%
• Final paper: 50%