Exploring Life in the Neighborhood Lab

Description

Unprecedented loss of biodiversity, anthropogenic activities, exploitation of natural resources, and globalising tendencies in recent decades threaten the balance between the intricate web of life on Earth and the processes that are pivotal to its survival. Although many efforts are being made globally, we are still far from achieving the necessary measures to restore the balance. One of the primary hindrances is the lack of general awareness of how nature drafts the code of life in our neighbourhoods and how various forms of life together respond and form the very basis on which natural forces operate in our backyard, much like a feedback loop. To fill these gaps, this course aims to bring students from various backgrounds— i.e., not limited to Biology only, but also from other sciences, humanities and social sciences— and introduce them to their local ecosystem and the intricacies of biological interactions using some basic and simplified concepts of ecology, evolution, and animal behaviour, followed by field observations as well as laboratory experiments. The course will have many open-ended exercises, encouraging students to develop small questions based on classroom discussions and observing various natural patterns (e.g., diversity of life) and processes (e.g., sexual interactions, prey-predator, disease spread, cannibalism).