Описание:The course of Evolutionary ecology offers students an opportunity to expand and deepen their understanding of fundamental biological principles at evolutionary and ecological levels. The course explores both scientific practice and progress not only through lectures, but also through reading and discussion of scientific papers. The course covers the main topics of evolutionary biology, ethology, population biology, developmental biology and molecular genetics, all within the conceptual framework of evolutionary ecology. We offer students an opportunity to become critical thinkers and critical readers. They will get tools to interpret the world in an evolutionary way.
All modules of our course can be easily adapted to any particular audience. The exact number of teaching hours per module depends upon specific requirements of a particular audience.
Evolutionary ecology – the introductory module (Dr. Vladimir Grinkov).
Evolutionary ecology situates at the intersection of ecology and evolutionary biology. All investigations in this area have to consider the evolutionary histories of species, communities and ecosystems. The main subfields of evolutionary ecology are: life history evolution, the evolution of interspecific relations and the evolution of biodiversity and of communities.
In the frames of the introductory module, the main terms and concepts of evolutionary biology, ecology and, especially, evolutionary ecology will be introduced in order to prepare students to more specific topics of the course.
Organism and environment co - evolution on Earth during the past 4 Ba (Prof. Andrey Zhuravlev).
Since the very appearance (c. 4 Ba) of the first communities, the biota began to transform the Earth's atmosphere as well as in part the hydrosphere (the World Ocean) and the lithosphere. The nature cycles of carbon, sulphur, silica, iron, and some other elements were subdued step by step to metabolism of prokaryotes and, later on, of eukaryotes leading to formation of major natural resources including coal, hydrocarbons, as well as major iron, manganese, gold and many other principal ores. With the advent of land biota starting as early as the Mesoproterozoic (c. 1.5 Ba), mostly through weathering and soil formation, climatic processes became entirely dependent on the biotic evolution which in turn led to an appearance of a denser cloud cover, permanent large meandering rivers, amelioration of inlands, and some other natural phenomena. In turn, global changes in the atmospheric composition and climates sped up the evolution and diversification of some taxa at the expense of evolutionary retardation and vanishing of other taxa. Recently, the appearance and development of the humankind became a significant part of these processes.
Co-evolution in the recent communities (Dr. Sergey Lysenkov)
Antagonistic coevolution.
Antagonistic coevolution occurs when one (or both) of interacting species is affected by the counterpart. These interactions can be described as competition or exploitation (predator-prey and host-parasite interactions).
The text-books claim that coevolution of competitive species leads to the divergence of phenotypic traits, but do we really know any proved example of such a divergence? Coevolution between the exploiting and the exploited species yields even more interesting dynamics of the phenotypic traits evolution. When does relationships of this kind lead to an arms race and when to the trait fluctuations only? Why do some parasites become less dangerous through the time and others do not? All these questions will be discussed in the course of lectures.
Mutualistic coevolution.
Interactions in which both species obtain mutual benefit are called mutualistic relationships or mutualism. However, pure mutualism and pure antagonism are very rare and should be seen as opposite poles in a continuum of interactions. One of the most interesting questions is: what kind of circumstances can trigger the transition from one type of interactions to the other? Even mutualism includes not only interactions between free-living species but also symbiotic interactions. In the second case, mutualistic coevolution usually leads to the strict specialization of co-evolving species, whereas in the first one a system consisted of multiple generalized species can evolve. This kind of systems is now extensively studied by the tools of network theory.
Anthropogenic evolution (Dr. Tatiana Putyatina)
Global urbanization affects all types of natural ecosystems on the Earth. However, the nature of big cities is affected in most dramatic way, and we can consider the urban ecosystems as anthropogenic once. In the frames of this module, we will discuss the following topics:
1) It is commonly emphasized that biotopes should not be isolated. Instead biotopes need to be connected to each other to work effectively. That is why the interconnection between the anthropogenic biotopes and the natural once is the most painful problem for anthropogenic environment.
2) We consider that a biotope works effectively if it is capable of self-regulation and self-restoration. Are urban biotopes (urbocoenoses) able to work in this way? Are they really robust?
3) The anthropogenic evolution is a very special case of evolutionary changes in species provoked by various anthropogenic factors. We will discuss the main anthropogenic factors influencing the urban populations, the rates and specific directions of the anthropogenic evolution.
4) In order to set up a correspondence between the anthropogenic biotopes and the natural once we will discuss various classification schemes of urban biotopes.
5) Devastation of urban territories and formation of technocoenoses will be discussed as a very extreme case of the environmental degradation.
6) The role of urban greenspaces and habitat variation in the formation of urban species community and in the preservation of urban biodiversity will be discussed by the example of ants inhabiting the big cities. The urban communities of ant species will be analyzed from the ecological, ethological and evolutionary viewpoints.
Eco-Evo-Devo (ecological evolutionary developmental biology) (Dr. Yulia Kraus, Dr. Elena Dmitrieva, Dr. Elena Severtsova)
Eco-Evo-Devo is a relatively new scientific discipline in the conceptual framework of evolutionary ecology. This discipline has been introduced by a famous developmental biologist Scott Gilbert in 2000 – 2009 (e.g. Gilbert, Epel, 2009). The major goal of eco-evo-devo is to highlight the interactions between developing organisms, their genes and their environmental contexts. Eco-Evo-Devo studies development in the real world of predators, pathogens, symbionts, environmental pollution, physical and chemical factors (temperature, pH etc.). In this module, we will discuss some key concepts within the eco-evo-devo.
1) The environment as a source (inducer) of genotypic and phenotypic variation at multiple levels of biological organization. Environmental signals. Phenotypic plasticity, variability and diversity. The norm of reaction.
2) The development as a regulator that can mask, release, or create new variations. Developmental plasticity, robustness and capacitance. Canalization of developmental pathways. Evolution of developmental pathways.
3) The molecular (genomic) basis of interactions between an organism’s development and environment. The epigenetics.
4) The role of natural selection in the generation of novel phenotypes: a developmental viewpoint.