300178 UE Modelling spatial and temporal dynamics of (ecological) animal and plant populations (2020W)

This course aims at introducing students to ecological modelling and the respective process from theoretical model development to its implementation. More precisely, the students will formulate research questions, based on ecological theory that will subsequently be formalized into mathematical formulas and afterwards implemented in the statistical programming language R. Finally, after learning and discussing different simplistic model types (e.g. population models, dispersal models), the course will go a step further to combine the different models into more complex and realistic models with interacting components. After successful completion, the students will be equipped with the necessary skills to formulate theoretical models to tackle a specific biological problem, translate the theoretical assumptions into mathematical formulas, implement these in R and evaluate the model outcomes and their ecological relevance.