EOSC 270 · Marine Biodiversity

Learning Goals

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

1. Describe the diversity of marine ecosystems on horizontal, vertical and latitudinal scales;
2. Elucidate the challenges of life in the different marine ecosystems and how organisms adapt to them;
3. Explain ecological, physical and chemical processes and interactions that define marine ecosystems;
4. Discuss some human impacts on these ecosystems;
5. Compare and contrast habitat and ecological processes between any number of marine ecosystems;
6. Analyze how the inherent characteristics of an ecosystem may make it resilient or susceptible to anthropogenic threats;

Instructors

Maite Maldonado, Evgeny Pakhomov

Textbook

Nybakken JW, Bertness MD. 2004. Marine Biology: An Ecological Approach, 6TH Edition. Benjamin Cummings, San Francisco, USA.

Course Content

Introduction to diversity of marine habitats and ecosystems; hydrothermal vent, intertidal, coral reef, estuarine, deep sea, and polar ecosystems; impacts of ecosystem change; evolution of ocean plankton; invasive species; climate change; pollution.

 This course offers an introduction for biologically focused undergraduate majors students into the coupling of biological, physical and chemical processes in the oceans. Through a number of ecosystem specific examples, students are exposed to the diversity of marine ecosystems, including what factors determine and regulate ocean habitats and how marine ecosystems develop in response. Ecosystems properties, including diversity, resilience (or lack of resilience) to environmental change and its impact on neighboring ecosystems will be developed.

Lecture Topics

· Microbial Diversity

· Rocky Intertidal

· Soft Bottoms - Sandy beaches & mud flats

· Estuarine System

· Coral Reefs – Ocean desert Oases

· Epipelagic

· Mesopelagic – The Twilight Zone

· Deep Sea

· Hydrothermal Vents

· Cold Seeps

· Polar Systems