Compared to most animals, plants have low mobility and therefore cannot easily escape adverse environmental conditions. Within the context of global change (climate change, land-use change, etc.), plants need to either adjust their spatial distribution or adapt plastically or evolutionarily to novel environmental conditions. Are they able to do so?
In the lectures, we teach theoretical knowledge from the field of plant evolutionary ecology to understand how plants can adapt evolutionarily to different stress factors. Intraspecific variation in ecologically relevant traits is key for such adaptation. Furthermore, we focus on methodological approaches in experimental plant ecology, quantitative genetics, and population genetics in lectures and seminars. In seminar meetings, participants read and present scientific articles, which are subsequently critically discussed within the group.
In the practicals, students design evolutionary ecological experiments (two students per experiment). These experiments are conducted in the greenhouse or climate chambers. Students present their results orally in a symposium and write a manuscript summarizing their study. In workshops, students learn the basics of experimental design and acquire skills to analyze and visualize the data using the statistical software package R.
