Software for Curricula in Ecology and Evolution

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This instructional software package, called Populus, is designed to support university courses in ecology and evolutionary biology, and has proven to be an extremely successful pedagogical tool in several institutions, worldwide. The goals of this project are to move research techniques into the classroom, using computer simulations to reduce mathematics anxieties by providing concrete demonstrations of dynamic behavior in a graphical and intuitively understandable way, allowing students to "play" with a model by running different parameter values until they understand the model's behavior. The PIs are expanding and enhancing an earlier version of Populus, which currently consists of 30 major models that span introductory to advanced topics in ecology and evolution. The intention is to thoroughly convert the program using "object oriented" programming techniques, which will lay the foundation for further development, and to improve and add new simulations modules and make functional additions to the program shell. They intend to build toward a product containing 50-60 modules.