Entomology 601

Fall 2007


Lectures

 

Week 1 27-Aug 1. Introduction. Course goals and procedures.
  29-Aug 2. Folk taxonomies. Historical development of systematics: Greeks through Linnaeus.
  31-Aug 3. Historical development of systematics: Darwin through the Evolutionary Synthesis.
Week 2 3-Sep 4. Concept of the population. Population structure.
  5-Sep 5. The Neodarwinian view of species. Polytypic species and geographic differentiation.
  7-Sep 6. Homology: the central concept in comparative biology.
Week 3 10-Sep 7. Character systems: morphology. Version with Audio
  12-Sep 8. Character systems: allozymes.
  14-Sep 9. Character systems: mitochondrial DNA.
Week 4 17-Sep 10. Character systems: protein-coding DNA
  19-Sep 11. Character systems: ribosomal DNA.
  21-Sep 12. Character systems: microsatellites.
Week 5 24-Sep 13. Evolutionary systematics: weighting of characters.
  26-Sep 14. Phenetic methods: measures of distance and association.
  28-Sep 15. Phenetics: clustering algorithms. Ultrametric and non-ultrametric clustering methods..
Week 6 1-Oct 16. Phenetics: Summary and critique.
  3-Oct 17. Phylogenetic systematics: philosophical foundations, terminology
  5-Oct 18. Phylogenetics: determination of character polarity.
Week 7 8-Oct 19. Phylogenetics: resolution of conflicting data, the parsimony criterion.
  10-Oct 20. Phylogenetics: tree building algorithms
  12-Oct 21. Phylogenetics: numerical parsimony methods
Week 8 15-Oct 23. Phylogenetics: assessing the robustness of results
  17-Oct 24. Phylogenetics: maximum likelihood methods
  19-Oct 25. Phylogenetics: Bayesian methods
Week 9 22-Oct 26. Phylogenetics: Applying the results in classifications, evolutionary systematics revisited.
  24-Oct 27. Phylogenetics: conclusion - Audio Version Lectures 26+27
  26-Oct 28. Introduction to speciation theory, allopatric speciation
Week 10 29-Oct 29. Semispecies, ring species and related problems. The problem of reinforcement of reproductive isolation.
  31-Oct 30. Species concepts: biological, phenetic, recognition
  2-Nov 31. Species concepts: recognition species and parthenogenetic systems.
Week 11 5-Nov 32. Sympatric Speciation
  7-Nov 33. A case study in speciation: the Hawaiian Drosophila
  9-Nov 34. Hybrid zones, species boundaries, parapatric speciation
Week 12 12-Nov 35. Species concepts: evolutionary, phylogenetic, summary and conclusion, cohesion species
  14-Nov 37. Zoological Nomenclature 1 (there is no Lecture 36!)
  16-Nov 38. Zoological Nomenclature 2
Week 13 19-Nov 39. Zoological nomenclature 3
  21-Nov 40. Zoological nomenclature 4
  23-Nov Thanksgiving holiday
Week 14 26-Nov 41. Zoological nomenclature, conclusions. and 42. Analytical Biogeography.
  28-Nov 43. Nested Clade Analysis
  30-Nov 44. Future Trends and New Possibilities
Week 15  Dec. 5 45. Class discussion and course critique