Biol 7083 - Community Ecology - Spring 2026

 

Instructor:  Dr. Kyle E. Harms

Syllabus, PowerPoint files, assigned readings, etc.  –  LSU students who are enrolled in the course will have access to these items via the course's LSU Moodle page; others may contact Kyle to receive them electronically.

 

Interesting Websites, Useful Software, Recommended Textbook, etc.

M. Cadotte — EEB & Flow

J. Fox (plus B. McGill and M. Duffy) — Dynamic Ecology

A. Hendry — Advice for Young Scientists
     (i.e., undergraduates, graduate students, and early-career faculty members)

M. Kaspari — Manifesto

M. Kaspari — Ten Principles of Ecology

J. Myers — Resources in Ecology, Evolution & Conservation

M. Noor — "Graduate School 101" & "Succeeding Beyond Graduate School"

H. Stevens — Primer of Ecology using R

E. White & S. K. M. Ernest — Jabberwoky Ecology

M. Vellend — R code forThe Theory of Ecological Communities

 

Analysis of Community Ecology Data in R — David Zelený

Community Ecology, 2nd edition — G. Mittelbach & B. McGill 
     (this is the community ecology textbook that I recommend)

EcoSimR — N. Gotelli & A. Ellison; freeware for various null-model analyses
     (e.g., see "Niche Overlap Tutorial" for a surprising result re MacArthur's warblers)

EstimateS — R. Colwell; freeware for diversity assessments;
     also within the website, follow the link to Anne Chao's website
     (e.g., rarefaction curves, etc.)

R4All — helpful R books and other resources for beginners to advanced users

The Ordination Page — M. Palmer; all sorts of useful info. re ordination

 

A few useful R packages for community ecology

  • BiodiversityR — R. Kindt; statistical tools for biodiversity analyses
  • CRAN — The Comprehensive R Archive Network; not all R packages are found here, but most are
  • fgeo — ForestGEO; for analysis of data from the large-scale forest-dynamics plot network
  • vegan — J. Oksanen; for various community-level analyses