BIO223 Evolutionary Biology

Credits (ECTS):10

Course responsible:Simen Rød Sandve

Campus / Online:Taught campus Ås

Teaching language:Norsk

Course frequency:Annually

Teaching and exam period:This course has teaching/evaluation in Spring parallel.

About this course

Topics covered through lectures, group work, and exercises:

  • Theoretical modell for how the evolutinoary forces, selection, drift, gene flow and mutation, drive genetic changes in populations and species.
  • How we can use genetic markers to study evolution of populations and species: genetic basis for local adaptations, adaptive evolution of protein coding genes, population divergence
  • Life history strategies and fitness
  • Speciation theory
  • Genome evolution: size and content
  • Evolution and developmental biology

Learning outcome

Knowledge

  • can describe basic theory on how genetic variation is shaped by the four evolutionary forces: mutation, selection, drift, and gene flow
  • can describe how the evolutionary forces work together and result in biologic variation, including natural adaptation, both within and between species
  • can describe how genetic data can be used to study evolutionary and ecological questions

Skills

  • can use the above-mentioned theoretical knowledge to interpret genetic and/or other biological data in the context of evolutionary biology
  • can carry out simple analyses of DNA-sequence data, like constructing multiple sequence alignments and estimating phylogenetic trees

General competence

  • solid theoretical knowledge to do master-level courses within population genetics, molecular evolution, breeding, ecology, and nature management
  • Lectures, compulsory group work, and student presentations.
  • Written examination, 3 hours, counts 100%. Compulsory assignments/group work must be approced before examination.
  • Group work with compulsory supervision resulting in a written report.
  • A combination of group work and lectures.
  • Letter grades
  • Special requirements in Science