Our tiny predators:
ecology, infection, and disease
New for spring 2015!
Biol 3700 Undergraduate seminar
Our Tiny Predators: Ecology, Infection, Disease
- Wednesdays 2:30 -4:25 pm
- EAST BANK
- 2 credits
No required textbooks, meets once per week.
Some topics we'll cover
Early in the development of our species, we suffered large predators in the way our primate relatives still do today. But then we developed spears longer than the longest teeth and our large predators were subdued. Yet predators still threaten today. We call them pathogens.
You will not be bored in this course. (1) You will learn how ecological predator-prey relationships acquire special characteristics when the predator is extremely small —
ecological characteristics we call ”symptoms of disease.” (2) You will learn how the
ecological challenges faced by small animals living in a pond parallel those faced by
pathogens living within the body of a host, and how knowledge of each can inform the
other. (3) You will learn how sexually transmitted diseases are formally equivalent to
vector-borne diseases such as those carried by mosquitoes. (4) How vaccination has the same properties in epidemiology as habitat destruction does in conservation biology. (5) How ideas and social concepts are transmitted between human minds according to the same dynamics as biological infections spread. (6) You will learn how computer programs shed light on the dynamics of disease, and as a citizen of the 21st-century, you will learn to communicate in one of the ubiquitous languages of our time — computer code, specifically R.
All this will be within a rigorous framework treating disease as a dynamical system of ecology. Applications to medicine, public health, wild and domestic animals, plants and crops, and conservation biology will emerge.
Questions about the class? Contact us!
Shelby Williams: will1366@umn.edu