BB809: Behavioural Biology (5 ECTS)

STADS: 04015001

Level
Master's level course approved as PhD course

Teaching period
The course is offered in the autumn semester.

Teacher responsible
Email: coen@biology.sdu.dk

Timetable
Show entire timetable
Show personal time table for this course.

Prerequisites:
None.

Academic preconditions:
The curriculum from a bachelor in biology, psychology, engineering or similar must be known.

Course introduction
The aim of this course is to give students heading for a Master’s degree in Biology and an introduction into and a broad overview on Behavioural Biology. Students interested in the field are given the chance to gain insights into major breakthroughs in Behavioural Biology, training in relating to currently debated topics, and an orientation about interesting questions for future projects.

The course gives an academic basis for the course BB835 and for a thesis or another activity involving studying the topics in behavioural biology and neuroscience.

In relation to the competence profile of the degree it is the explicit focus of the course to:

• Give the competence to read original research literature covering behavioural biology
• Give skills to make unbiased observations and quantification of animal behaviour.
• Give knowledge and understanding of basic terminology and state of the art methodologies in behavioural biology.

Expected learning outcome
The learning objectives of the course are that the student demonstrates the ability to:

• structure the presented overview on behavioural biology 
• argue on the basis of the acquired knowledge about behavioural biology 
• relate examples presented to basic concepts of behavioural biology 
• analyze a new problem presented in a journal article on a behavioural biological subject 
• classify exemplary methods according to the approaches presented in a behavioural biological study
• use systematic methods to quantify animal behaviour

Subject overview
The course covers a wide variety of topics in Behavioural Biology. The lecture topics are:

• History of Behavioural Biology and modern approaches 
• Sensory systems and cognitive mechanisms
• Learning and animal culture
• Orientation and habitat selection
• Foraging and antipredator behaviour
• Communication and aggression
• Mating systems and kinship
• Social behaviour and human behaviour
• The students are presented with the practical use of behavioural biology through field assignments and an excursion that will give insights into ongoing scientific projects in a zoo.

Literature
There isn't any litterature for the course at the moment.

Website
This course uses e-learn (blackboard).

Prerequisites for participating in the exam

1. Active participation in lectures (min. 80%) and active participation in field trip. Pass/fail, internal evaluation by teacher.

Assessment and marking:
Portfolio with

• written assignment on animal behaviour
• e-tests
• oral presentation of seminar

In the literature seminars each student must choose a recent journal article on a Behavioural Biology topic. She/he is asked to prepare a short presentation and discussion of the work, which is presented and discussed in plenum. Two students are pre-assigned to be discussion opponents and have to prepare critical questions to the presenters.

Overall assessment, external marking and grades by the Danish 7-mark scale. (5 ECTS). (04015002).

Reexam in the same exam period or immediately thereafter. The mode of exam at the re-examination may differ from the mode of exam at the ordinary exam.

Expected working hours
The teaching method is based on three phase model.
Intro phase: 20 hours
Skills training phase: 25 hours, hereof:
 - Tutorials: 20 hours
 - Excursion: 5 hours

Educational activities

Educational form
Activities during the study phase:

• Reading scientific article
• Critical reflection / commentary
• Preparation for plenum presentation

Language
This course is taught in English.

Remarks
Fall 2017 will be the last time this course is offered as a master course - from the fall of 2018 the course will be offered as a bachelor course. Bachelors is therefor this fall 2017, allowed to take this course.

Course enrollment
See deadline of enrolment.

Tuition fees for single courses
See fees for single courses.