Profile Biology Ecology

Students will be required to conduct a bibliographic analysis on a topic of their choice, approved by the EU officials. Under the supervision of a teacher-researcher, students will have to answer the questions they raise through an analysis of the available bibliography. They will have to review the state of the art in their field of work, identify areas of uncertainty and controversy, and open questions that remain to be resolved. They will be required to carry out a genuine critical scientific analysis of the available bibliography, rather than simply summarizing it. They will be required to follow the conventions for writing a scientific article, which involves citing sources, synthesizing information through illustration, problematization, and summarizing scientific results.

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This course builds on the Evolutionary Foundations course to introduce key concepts in evolutionary ecology in order to understand and formalize, in a simple way, the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that shape biodiversity at different scales of integration.

This course unit is designed as a coherent whole, with lectures, tutorials, and practicals complementing each other. Concepts are introduced through examples and then formalized using mathematical models, which are tested against experiments and real-world data.

It will cover population dynamics (intra- and interspecific competition) and ecological niche, and will detail the mechanisms of evolution and their genetic consequences at the population level: natural selection (including sexual selection), the influence of reproductive regimes, and genetic drift. The tutorials will enable students to grasp the mathematical formalization of concepts covered in class and their simple computer modeling, as well as data set analysis. The practicals will enable small groups to carry out and analyze two experiments, each lasting one month (with a report and oral presentation), in order to develop scientific methodology and reasoning.

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The EU is organized into five main themes:

Topic 1: Genetic mapping and recombination. Concepts of molecular biology related to gene expression, DNA repair, and epigenetic processes.

Theme 2: Introduction to molecular evolution: Measuring the intensity of selection in genetic divergence. Molecular clock and variation in rates of evolution created by the action of natural selection. Neutral theory of evolution.

Theme 3: Introduction to genomics: composition and size of genomes. Importance of repeated elements. Concept of genetic linkage and local selection effects. Influence of demography.

Theme 4: Molecular tools for biodiversity: Barcoding, eDNA, metabarcoding. Molecular taxonomy. Limitations related to hybridization. Applications in conservation.

Theme 5: Extranuclear heredity . Symbiosis, parasitism, and co-evolution (intracellular: e.g., Wolbachia). Extended concept of phenotype.

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This teaching unit will aim to address the elements necessary for understanding the lifestyle of large groups of single-celled organisms that form the basis of ecosystem functioning (viruses, bacteria, archaea, and single-celled eukaryotes, etc.). The courses cover the biological organization of each type of organism, their modes of reproduction, and their diversity, leading to concepts of ecology. We will discuss the role of these microorganisms in the functioning and dynamics of ecosystems, considering the interactions that these organisms have with other living beings (the concept of "symbiosis" in all its forms).

The practical work will enable:

 - the implementation of techniques enabling bacterial enumeration (CFU) and the identification of a particular strain from an environmental sample

 - highlighting the diversity of phytoplankton (single-celled algae) in aquatic environments (freshwater)

 - highlighting the specificity of interactions between bacteria and bacteriophages

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The main objective is to learn the basics of comparative anatomy of chordates, so that they can be compared and classified, before tracing the key stages of their evolutionary history. The lessons are integrative in that they draw on both current organisms and the fossil record to document the evolutionary history of the clade in its entirety and in all its aspects. Anatomical, biomechanical, phylogenetic, and ecomorphological approaches will be addressed in lectures to illustrate the diversity and major characteristics of chordates. Practical work (and tutorials) will illustrate the evolution of the diversity of integuments, the skeleton, musculature, and the digestive and respiratory systems over long periods of time.

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This course is a natural continuation of the course " Quantification of Risk " (HAV424B) presented in S4. It aims to provide the concepts for constructing experimental protocols that answer biological questions and to associate them with appropriate models for analyzing variability. The first part will be devoted to the construction of experimental protocols that can answer a multitude of questions in the life sciences, i.e., taking into account the inevitable dependence of statistical individuals, such as kinship, spatial or temporal structure of populations. This part will provide an opportunity to address the concepts of fluctuation, replication, and pseudo-replication, which will be taken into account in the models constructed in the second part of the course. The second part will focus on demonstrating the link between the experimental protocol carried out and the modeling of the variability of a quantitative response variable, through the construction of models including several qualitative or quantitative variables. Particular attention will be paid to the conditions for applying these methods, type I and II errors, methods for estimating the parameters of the models constructed (including likelihood), and the interpretation of the estimated parameters. Each concept will be illustrated by the analysis of real biological data from several topics, helping students to discover not only modern and current biological issues but also the tools developed to address them. Practical work using R will enable students to independently perform analyses on published biological cases.

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