Environmental science - ecology course - Best Online Short Courses

Ecology Studies – Population and Community Ecology is a free ALISON online course that introduces you to patterns of population distribution, population growth and species relationships and behaviors.The course will be of great interest to professionals working in the areas of ecology or environmental science, and who would like to learn more about the social and environmental consequences of population growth, and the different characteristics of species behavior.

Ecology Studies Course Content

The course includes:

The tools that ecologists use to measure the characteristics of populations such as size, density, dispersion pattern and age structure;
How life tables are used to calculate population life expectancy;
The environmental limits to population growth, how populations with unlimited resources grow exponentially and, when resources become limited why populations then follow a logistic growth curve;
Population dynamics and regulation based on density-dependent and density-independent factors;
The age structure of a population allows us to predict population growth;
The characteristics used to categorize species;
Community ecology, community structure and keystone species;
How some species can form symbiotic relationships within an ecological community;
Behavioral biology – imprinting and habituation, conditioning, and cognitive learning and methods of communication.