Each student is required to develop a 10-minute presentation summary of the fundamental topics 

Population ecology is the study of these and other questions about what factors affect population and how and why a population changes over time. Population ecology has its deepest historic roots, and its richest development, in the study of population growth, regulation, and dynamics, or demography. Human population growth serves as an important model for population ecologists, and is one of the most important environmental issues of the twenty-first century. But all populations, from disease organisms to wild-harvested fish stocks and forest trees to the species in a successional series to laboratory fruit files and paramecia, have been the subject of basic and applied population biology.

Life histories vary tremendously from one species to the next. Why all the variation?

The study of population ecology includes understanding, explaining, and also predicting species distributions. Why do species inhabit particular areas, and also how are they prevent ed from establishing beyond their range limits? Such range questions have become popular in the last decade or so in response to concerns about climate change.