Welcome to the Course

Welcome to this course on the ecological processes that are present in tropical forests! You have already completed the course on the structure and composition of tropical forest ecosystems, where you learnt about some of the organisms that can be found in tropical forests. You will now learn about the relationships between these organisms. You will also continue to develop your soft skills, especially those related to problem-solving and communication.

As we stated in the previous course, tropical forests are one of the wonders of the world. They are incredibly complex, and the ecological relationships between the different organisms within them remain very poorly understood. This course will help you to understand what is already known, and what remains to be discovered.

As a first step, we suggest that you look at the following video.

How to take the course?

While the whole course has been divided up into bite-sized chunks, enabling you to go specific topics with ease, we strongly recommend that you work through the course progressively from start to end. This is particularly important if you are taking the course for credit, as you will be assessed on your progress throughout the course.

The course is divided into five modules. In Module 1, we investigate species diversity and some of the theories that have arisen to explain the extraordinary diversity of species found in tropical forests. The division of topics between Modules 2, 3 and 4 is rather arbitrary, and has been done more for convenience than for any strict scientific reason. In Module 2, we look at ecosystem processes, in Module 3, we examine plant reproduction, and in in Module 4, we look at interactions. There are obviously overlaps between these three. For example, most plant reproduction involves interactions between individuals of the same species, and very often a different species is involved in pollination. In the case studies (Module 5), we also address some of these aspects of forest ecology.

There is an important point to note in the case of Module 5. We have presented a number of case studies, and will be adding more in time. You are only required to study three of these. They have been divided into three groups, and we would like you to take one case study from each group. You are of course free to look at more than three, but this will take more time than we can justifiably require you to spend on the course.

Within each module, there are a number of topics, and each topic is further divided into a number of subject areas. At the end of each topic, there will be a self-test as well as reflective questions. In addition, there are two to three assignments associated with the each module (with the exception of Module 5). You will not only be completing these assignments yourself, but you will also be assessing the quality of other people’s assignments. You will be graded on both your work and how you assess the work of others (i.e. on your critical skills)

The main sources of information are:

• These provide details about a subject area. They are not narrated, so you can spend as long as you wish on each slide. The presentations have been developed using Powerpoint, and it is important that you use the view that enables you to see any notes associated with a slide. In many cases, these notes will you refer to an online source of further information about a particular subject.
• Working in tropical forests presents many challenges. It is very difficult to see or photograph the ‘ecology’, or even the constituent parts of the ecosystems. For example many inhabitants are nocturnal. Others are restricted to the upper layers of the canopy. Consequently, gaining information about them is extremely difficult and requires specialist techniques, and a great of deal (as well as luck). Wildlife videographers have been able to capture many organisms and their behavior on film, and we make use of that material here.
• We have tried to utilize as much online material as possible, but there are some items that you will have to use paper copies. The most important is the key textbook: “Tropical Rain Forest Ecology, Diversity, and Conservation” by Jaboury Ghazoul and Douglas Sheil. This only covers half of the material and omits tropical seasonal forests. There is no textbook dealing with seasonal forests, and remarkably few more specialized books. We refer you instead to specific readings.

Eventually, when this and the accompanying course form part of a formal Master’s programme, there will be a field course associated with the programme, and a significant component of this will be on the ecology of tropical forests. However, this will be an independent course, and you will not need to undertake it in order to gain the credits for the tropical forest ecology course.

How to advance in the course?

As recommended above, you should take this course sequentially. If you are taking the supervised version of this course (as opposed to following the course independently), you will have a number of assignments. These increase in difficulty through the course, reflecting your growing understanding of the topic. Your progress will also be assessed as you move through the topics and modules: this will give you an idea of whether you are on track or not.

What’s my advice?

If you have taken the accompanying course of the structure and composition of tropical forests, you should by now have an idea of the bewildering variety of life found in tropical forests. Not all of this is visible: some is nocturnal, some is microscopic, some seasonal and some aquatic. The sheer diversity of species is a problem in itself: how did it evolve and why does it persist? Why are there so many tree species? How can so many species of apparently similar birds survive in the same patch of forest? Why are some species wide-ranging and others highly localized? How do plants survive in the deep shade of a closed-canopy rain forest?

Taking a course in tropical forest ecology may be similarly overwhelming. You are not going to be able to learn everything there is to know about the ecological processes occurring in tropical forests so, as with the species richness, our recommendation is that you try and learn a little about a lot of aspects of the forests. In this course, you should try and develop a broad overview of the different processes occurring in tropical forests and the factors affecting them. Understanding these is critical to understanding how interventions by humans affect the ecosystems.