The field of Community ecology bridges biodiversity science, biogeography, evolution and conservation. This course will provide graduate students with a quantitative approach to understanding patterns and processes that define ecological communities, with an emphasis on theoretical, experimental, and quantitative approaches. The class format includes lectures, journal discussions, and hands-on processing and simulations of ecological data. Students in this course will be expected to read, comprehend, and evaluate literature that defines theories and models that define community ecology, including classic literature. Additionally, students will learn basic syntax allowing them to use R, a programming language. Graduate students will be expected to use those basic syntax skills to utilize provided code to model ecological populations and communities, and evaluate those results.