Reading List

Some suggested reading for students on the Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity programme

1. Introduction to R

We will use the software R to deliver the practical elements of statistics in the first semester, and in many of the first and second semester courses.

There will be some introduction to using R in semester 1, but we highly recommend that you familiarise yourself with the basics of this software. For anyone who hasn’t used it before this video provides clear instructions on how to get started with R and R studio. There is also a series of R basics tutorials offered by Coding Club, an Edinburgh based initiative.

Another useful resource is:

  • Beckerman, Childs & Petchey; Getting started with R: An Introduction for Biologists

 

2. Global change ecology

Most of the taught material will be from peer reviewed papers rather than textbooks. If you are interested in doing some reading in advance of the programme the following provide stimulating perspectives.

Dawson, T.P., Jackson, S.T., House, J.I., Prentice, I.C. and Mace, G.M., 2011. Beyond predictions: biodiversity conservation in a changing climate. science, 332(6025), pp.53-58

Bellard, C., Marino, C. and Courchamp, F., 2022. Ranking threats to biodiversity and why it doesn’t matter. Nature Communications, 13(1), p.2616.

Popular science: Quammen, D., 2012. The song of the dodo: island biogeography in an age of extinctions. Random House.

 

3. Evolutionary ecology

The eco-evolutionary responses to anthropogenic environments  course in  semester 2 will cover some population genetics and quantitative genetics, though the course will start with a refresher of key concepts.

If you haven’t encountered population genetics before the following textbook provides an accessible introductions, see chapters on “The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection” and “Phenotypic Evolution”.

Futuyma, D.J. and Kirkpatrick, M., 2017. Evolution. Sunderland, MA.

For discussion of evolution in the face of climate change the following paper gives an excellent introduction.

Hoffmann, A.A. and Sgrò, C.M., 2011. Climate change and evolutionary adaptation. Nature, 470(7335), pp.479-485

This article was published on