Week : 2

Date : 

March 2, 2015 & March 5, 2015

Topic :

 Introduction to Principle of Ecology

Activities :

Dr Wan asked us to sit in our group and she gave us several tasks. We needed to pick one of the article or website from the first task that we found the most interesting. Then, we must relate it with the principle of microbial ecology. From this activity, I understood what is microbial ecology is about and can relate it with the article that I read. Now, I knew that the interaction of organisms among them and with the environment are important in an ecosystem. During the second class, we started our lesson on the first topic. This topic discussed the basic thing and intro about this subject. It was a fun topic though there were terms that I never heard before.

Notes :

Own reading and exploration :

Since it was the first topic, I didn't refer any additional source of reading otherwise I just used the lecture note given by Dr Wan. It was not a tough topic as this topic explained the introduction and gave us us better understanding about this subject. I found some new terms such as r strategist and K strategist. 

Reflection on this topic:

This is an important topic as it covers many ecological terms that need to understand before learning the other chapter. Each term needs to be understood in order to understand this topic. I learnt the hierarchy of ecology which is, species --> population --> community --> ecosystem --> biosphere. Besides, we learnt about the homeostasis. Homeostasis is the dynamic balance of processes, materials and organisms in the ecosystem and it is hard to achieve. We also learnt about r strategist which occurs in short period, for example the bacteria while K strategist occurs longer than r strategist.