Culture an ability to read scientific literature and articulate your own understanding and opinions about it. The lecture part of the course introduces the major concepts of the science. As such, it provides a means of learning about ecology. The laboratory part of the course builds upon that accumulated knowledge. Our hope is to have you more fully learn ecology by doing ecology.
Ecology is a science.
Therefore, learning how to do ecology entails putting the scientific method into action. In its contemporary form, the scientific method is an iterative process that may be thought of in the following way. It is important to note that science is not a system of question and answer. Instead, it is a way of testing and refining our ideas about the world. In the form of hypotheses, such ideas may be scientifically disproved or improved, but never proved outright.