BIO 314 - Molecular Ecology, 4 credit hours

Prerequisite(s): “C-” or better in BIO 211. BIO 212 is also recommended.
Molecular ecology is a young and exciting field that is taking advantage of the rapid development of new techniques in molecular genetics as well as advances in the theoretical and statistical approaches to interpreting the wealth of molecular data now available. Essentially, molecular ecology describes the dynamics of evolutionary change at the molecular level. Specifically, molecular ecology employs variation in nucleic acid and/or proteins to answer questions involving organismal behavior, kinship, populations and communities of organisms and phylogenies. The laboratory will be a hands-on introduction to the standard genetic markers computational techniques culminating in an independent project. After an introduction to some of the techniques and methods, you will be conducting your own independent project in the field. You will be responsible for choosing a study system, collection of tissue samples, extraction of genetic material, and assays of genetic material by one or more molecular markers.