Biol 324 Course Topics

Course topics
Skeleton notes of some important topics in the course. These are rough, and a work in progress, but are given for the convenience of students. These notes are not a substitute for taking notes in lectures as much more infomation is packed into the lectures than is given here.

General

• The hand lens

Lectures 1-6

Parts of the flower

• Perianth
• Hypanthium
• Androecium
• Gynoecium
• Placentation
• Inferior and superior ovaries
• After the flower Fruits
• Patterning the flower
• Trends in floral evolution

Major clades of flowering plants

• Amborella
• Nymphaeales
• Austrobaileyales
• Magnoliids
• Monocots and eudicots

Flowers in relation to agents of pollination

• Beetle pollination
• Fly pollination
• Butterfly pollination
• Moth pollination
• Bee pollination
• Bird pollination
• Bat pollination
• Other mammal pollination
• Wind pollination
• Water pollination
• Self-pollination

Lectures 7-12
Inflorescences

• Types of inflorescences
• Mechanisms of inflorescence patterning
• Pollination of specialized inflorescences, Arum and Ficus

Leaves, roots, stems as sources of taxonomic characters

• Leaves
• Roots
• Stems

Topics in taxonomy

• Nomenclature
• Phylocode
• Linnaeus' Sexual System

Lectures 13-18

Lectures 19-24

• Linear APG III classification