BIOGEOGRAPHY

BSC 5935 / BSC 4993 

Javier Francisco Ortega

Gerald F. Guala

Instructors:

Javier Francisco-Ortega
Room 242 at OE Bldg., email: ortegaj@fiu.edu,
alternative email: a3835@hotmail.com,
phone: 305-6652844 Ext 3423 (Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden)
Office hours: Wednesdays (FIU): 9:00 - 12:00
Fridays (FTG): 9 – 12:00 am

&

Gerald Guala

Email: Stinger@fiu.edu
 

Meeting Time:

Course meets every Friday afternoon. 15:00-18:00pm (tentative)

Meeting Place:

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Research Center.
11935 Old Cutler Rd.
Coral Gables, FL 33156
Map

There will also be field trips during class time.

Book:

Biogeography, Second Edition.  James H. Brown & Mark V. Lomolino. 1998. Sinauer Assoc. Sunderland, Massachusetts.
(with handouts, web sites and other course material provided by the instructors)

Grades:

Grades will be based on a Mid-Term Exam and a Final Exam.
Undergraduates will have multiple choice or short answer exams.  Graduate students will have essay exams and will be required to do a research paper.
All students will also be graded on a series of group presentations on papers read over the previous week.  These will each be worth 10 points.

Mid term exam:
A mid term exam will be worth 100 points and take place Friday, February 18th at 15:00 at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. For undergrads, this will be a test which will combine both multiple choice and short answer questions. It will cover all topics taught until February 11th, including papers presented by discussion groups.  For graduate students the topics will be the same but the exam will consist of essay questions.

Final exam:
A final term exam will be worth 100 points and take place (Tuesday April 25th at 3pm at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden). For undergrads, this will be a test which will combine both multiple choice and short answer questions. It will cover all topics taught between February 25th and April 14th including papers presented by discussion groups.  For graduate students the topics will be the same but the exam will consist of essay questions.

For undergraduates there are 50 points for presentations + 100 for midterm + 100 for final = 250 points.
For graduates another 100 points is added for the research paper, thus their total is 350 points.
The grade is simply the percentage of those points gotten from the number available.
Grades will be based on a straight scale (A = 4.0 = 90%, B+ = 3.5 = 85%, B = 3.0 = 80%, C+ = 2.5 = 70%, C = 2.0 = 70% etc.).

Presentations:

There will be five half class periods for "presentation of papers".  At least four major "discussion groups" will be formed among the students.  Each group will read one paper on a major biogeography topic covered in our class.  These papers will be handed out one week in advance.  Each group will have a "spokesperson" who will present the paper and lead the discussion with the rest of the class. Each person will eventually serve as a spokesperson.  It is anticipated that the major biogeography topics discussed in these sections will lead to further discussion concerning the role of biogeography to understand patterns of organismal and ecological biodiversity on our planet.  Each person in the group will receive the average of a possible ten points awarded for the groups work on a particular topic.

Research report for graduate students:

Each graduate student should write a 10-15 page long "Biogeography Report" on a topic selected after discussing his/her major research interests with
either of us.  The report should be written double space, using a 12 point font.  The paper can have unlimited additional pages with References, Tables,
and Figures.

Students will use some of the concepts given in the lectures for this report and we will assist them in the literature search and in developing some of
their own ideas.  We encourage students to make an appointment with us in the first two weeks of class to start developing some ideas and tracing some of the relevant literature.  This assignment will be graded based on the following five points:

(1) Presentation and structural organization of report
(2) Use of updated information
(3) Rational use of Tables and Figures
(4) Use of concepts provided in the lectures
(5) Use of novel ideas not provided in lectures

Each of these five aspects will contribute equally (20%) to the final evaluation of this report.  However we encourage students to pay
particularly attention to the final point [number (5)].  We firmly believe that students who make an effort to learn about biogeography outside the scope
of our lectures should be rewarded in the final evaluation.  Evaluation of this report will be based ONLY on the quality of the paper and not on the
number of written pages.  Any report which has between 10 and 15 pages of body text (not including references, tables etc.)  will be equally assessed based on the five criteria points previously indicated.    The paper is due on 14 april during class.  Students will loose 5% per 24 hrs that it is late.
 

Lecture Schedule


14 January:What Biogeography is & History of Biogeography (Read Chapters 1-2)
ORTEGA: Introduction to Biogeography and the general questions addressed.  Historical vs. modern questions.  Some of the great Biogeographers and their influence on modern Biogeography.

21 January:Spatial Environmental Parameters (Read Chapter 3 )
ORTEGA: Physical differences over the earth and variance at different spatial scales.

28 January:Spatial Environmental Parameters in Time (Read Chapters 6-7& Presentation of  Paper)
ORTEGA: Plate tectonics, Paleo climates, soil formation at different time scales.

4 February:How Evolution Happens (Read Chapter 8)
GUALA: Speciation and extinction at different scales in time and space.

11 February: How We Look at the Relationships of Taxa (Read This - all four sections)
GUALA: Cladistic realtionships and how they relate to classification.

18 February: MID-TERM

25 February: The Distribution of Species (Read Chapter 4)
GUALA: Limitations by spatial parameters, history and distribution.

3 March: The Distribution of Communities(Read Chapter 5 & Presentation of  Paper)
ORTEGA: What a community is, how they form and are distributed.
 

10 March: Historical Biogeography(Read Chapter 12)
GUALA: Brooks etc.

17 March: Modern Technology & Biogeography (Presentation of  Paper)
GUALA: GIS, GPS, Analytical programs

24 March: SPRING BREAK

31 March: Island Biogeography
ORTEGA:

7 April: Dispersal and/vs Vicariance, & Areas of Endemism (Read chapters 9&10 & Presentation of  Paper)
GUALA:
 
 

14 April: Conservation & Biogeography (Read Chapters 16-19 & Presentation of  Paper)
ORTEGA:

FINAL


About Your Instructors:

Javier Francisco-Ortega is originally from the Canary Islands and in the last 15 years has been doing research on the origin and evolution of the
flora of these islands.  These islands are part of Spain although they are at just 100 km of the Western Saharan coast. He conducts most of his research at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden where his laboratory is located.  This laboratory is situated in the Research Center of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden at 11935 Old Cutler Road.  You are welcome to visit his laboratory any time.

Gerald "Stinger" Guala grew up in Pennsylvania and has spent the last decade in Florida.  He directs the operations of the Fairchild Tropical Garden Herbarium (the largest collection at the garden) and directs the Graduate Systematics Program at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.  His research is focussed on Biogeography and systematics, especially of the grasses.  He also works extensively with large databases in botany.

We both have a VERY STRONG commitment for teaching and therefore we are ALWAYS available for students.  If ANY student wants to discuss any issue of the course outside the office hours, all they  have to do is contact one of us by email or phone.

Course Objectives:

This course is designed to give students an overview of what biogeography is and how it is useful to scientists and the general public.  Students will learn the cutting edge techniques in Biogeography as well as the historical methods on which they are based.  The course is global in perspective and includes plants as well as animals, although given the relative strengths of your instructors, plant examples will proliferate.

Organization of lectures and seminars:

Most of our lectures will be presented using slides, overhead transparencies or computer generated images.  Much of the material from the lectures will be
posted on the web site for the course ( http://www.virtualherbarium.org/biog/ ).  Lecture outlines will be posted on the web site at least 24 hrs before class and students will be expected to come to class with their own hard copy.   There will be a 10 min. break in the middle of the 3 hour lecture period.   We ENCOURAGE students to interrupt us at any time during our lectures to ask questions and also ENCOURAGE discussion during our lectures.  We also ENCOURAGE students to set an appointment with us at least twice during this semester. This will help us to have any feedback on our performance as instructors and also to know if students are having a good learning experience.

Student code of conduct:

Students are expected to respect and obey all regulations concerning the code of conduct as they are indicated in the Student Handbook of Florida International University. Therefore academic misconduct as indicated in this handbook will not be tolerated. We treat each student as a mature and
responsible person and therefore we expect that we will not be dealing with cases of "cheating" of "plagarism". Cases of academic misconduct will lead
to disciplinary penalties as indicated in the Student Handbook.
 


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Page Created 12 Nov. 1999
Updated 20 Dec. 1999