Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ecology......................................................................................................................2
Course materials.........................................................................................................3
Book 1: Interactions...............................................................................................3
Book 3: Communities.............................................................................................4
Book 4: Ecosystems................................................................................................4
Do this....................................................................................................................5
Try this...................................................................................................................5
Acknowledgements........................................................................................................5
1
Introduction and contents
The materials listed below are presented on the following pages of this unit in pdf
format.
Book 1: Interactions
Book 3: Communities
Book 4: Ecosystems
Ecology
About this course
Course description
Ecology is the study of how organisms interact with each other and with their
environment – a truly vast area of biology. The original course examined the
biological principles that are the basis for analysing and understanding ecological
situations, and should give you some of the skills and knowledge needed by
professional ecologists.
There were five books, each taking an experimental and investigative approach,
included in the original course materials which are presented here:
2
Book 4 Ecosystems examines the role of primary producers, consumers and
decomposers in ecosystems, and how they are linked by energy flow and
mineral cycles.
Course materials
Book 1: Interactions
Below is each of the sessions that make up book 1 of Ecology, Interactions. To see the
files click on 'View document' below the session title.
View document
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Below are each of the sessions that make up book 2 of Ecology, Population Ecology.
To see the files click on 'View document' below the session title.
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3
Click 'View document' below to open file.
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Book 3: Communities
Below are each of the sessions that make up book 3 of Ecology, Communities. To see
the files click on 'View document' below the session title.
View document
View document
View document
Book 4: Ecosystems
Below are each of the sessions that make up book 4 of Ecology, Ecosystems. To see
the files click on 'View document' below the session title.
View document
View document
View document
4
Below are each of the sessions that make up book 5 of Ecology, Humans and ecology.
To see the files click on 'View document' below the session title.
View document
View document
View document
Do this
Now you have completed this unit, you might like to:
Try this
Acknowledgements
This material is taken from The Open University's OpenLearn website. OpenLearn
provides free open educational resources for learners and educators around the world
under a Creative Commons licence. Third party materials have been removed but for
ease of use the original acknowledgements copy has been included. For the online
version of this unit and for other free educational resources across a range of topics,
please go to http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/home.php.