Modelling of Biological Systems

Aim

The aim is that students should be able to acquire and utilize basic knowledge of mathematical and statistical models for applied and theoretical problems in ecology and biology, as well as to be able to construct and use models in the program language R. Students shall be able to handle the four stages after completion of the course:

• Formulate and construct a mathematical model from verbal description of known experimental relations
• Mathematically analyze and apply a model
• Interpret and evaluate the mathematical analysis in the context of the experimental knowledge
• Present the model and its results.

Upon completion of the course the student is expected to complete the basic programming tasks and visualization tasks in R.

The course also aims at giving the student advanced knowledge of concepts and theories in community ecology and how these apply to current environmental problems.

Content

Basic programming in R such as; familiarity with standard functions found in R, create their own functions in R, use of R for large data analysis, as well as visualization of data in R.

The models that will be treated are; models in discrete and continuous time, deterministic and stochastic models.

Presentation skills.

The course also deals with the structure and dynamics of ecological communities in time and space as well as how they react to different types of disorders.