Overview

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Academic contacts

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Offerings

MURDOCH-S1-FACE2FACE-2025-ONGOING
MURDOCH-S1-ONLINEFLEX-2025-ONGOING

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Other learning activities

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Learning activities

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Learning outcomes

1.
Develop foundational academic skills that underpin the professional scientific inquiry; scientific literacy, numeracy, written and oral communication and critical thinking and apply them in the context of Environmental Biology
2.
Demonstrate key skills that support success in university study; time management, information seeking, support seeking and building effective peer relationships.
3.

Explain the role of hypothesis, replication and control treatments in experimental design and illustrate your understanding by either (i) designing simple experiments of your own, or (ii) providing an intelligent critique of an example of an experimental design.

4.

Outline the major tenets of the cell theory and the theory of evolution and explain how these theories unify modern biology including classification of living organisms.

5.

Describe the main features of marine, inland aquatic and terrestrial environments and give examples of animals and plants that are adapted to each.

6.

Outline the main features of conservation biology as a sub-discipline of environmental biology and present a rationale for the conservation of the wild living resources of the earth.

7.

Investigate and identify biological specimens using a range of tools including microscopes and dichotomous keys. 

Assessments

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Additional information

Unit content:

The unit is organised into five broad themes: Theme 1 What is Environmental Biology? · The characteristics of the human species · Human impacts on the biota of the earth. Theme 2 The Scientific Method and the Unifying Theories of Modern Biology · Hypothesis testing in modern science · The cell theory · The theory of evolution Theme 3 Applying Scientific Method – Classifying Biodiversity · Principles of biological classification · The major phyla of prokaryotes, fungi, animals and plants Theme 4 Applying Scientific Method – Biodiversity and the Environment · Population Ecology · Community Ecology · Marine Environments · Aquatic Inland Environments · Terrestrial Environments Theme 5 The Future Conservation biology