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Unit Summary
Unit type
UG Coursework Unit
Credit points
12
AQF level
Level of learning
Advanced
Former School/College
Pre-requisites
192 credit points in any SCU Unit
Unit aim
Examines the range of natural marine communities occurring on rocky substrates, their ecological structure and function, links between communities, and their responses to natural and human-induced disturbances. Students will be actively involved with quantitative field studies of various subtropical marine communities.
Unit content
The schedule of topics is spread between lectures, field studies, workshops and laboratory classes:
Topic 1: Principles of community ecology (a refresher)
Topic 2: Communities of rocky shores
Topic 3: Communities of subtidal reefs
Topic 4: Aspects of functional ecology
Topic 5: Communities as sentinels of change (case studies)
Learning outcomes
Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.
| On completion of this unit, students should be able to: | GA1 | GA2 | GA3 | GA4 | GA5 | GA6 | GA7 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | describe the main types of hard marine substrates and the biota that inhabits them | |||||||
| 2 | explain the primary biotic and abiotic processes affecting marine organisms in different habitats | |||||||
| 3 | discuss the suitability of different communities for monitoring environmental condition. | |||||||
On completion of this unit, students should be able to:
-
describe the main types of hard marine substrates and the biota that inhabits them
- GA1:
- GA4:
-
explain the primary biotic and abiotic processes affecting marine organisms in different habitats
- GA1:
- GA4:
-
discuss the suitability of different communities for monitoring environmental condition.
- GA1:
- GA2:
- GA4:
Prescribed texts
- Connell, SD & Gillanders, BM , 2007, Marine Ecology, Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN: 9780195553024.