Very interesting topic and I appreciate all the diverse opinions and perspectives. I wanted to suggest that there is a larger issues at play here that is intimately tied to the question at hand, namely the fact that a majority of incoming biology students do not have good training in what has been called quantitative reasoning and data literacy. I have found in my own experience, that students entering college are often lacking in both quantitative skills and data literacy. These deficiencies create large barriers to teaching across the sciences, and I spend substantial portions of class and lab time addressing basic and sometimes fairly remedial quantitative skills. I also think that the science of ecology is a potentially great place to teach some of this material. It is not that the subject of Ecology can be made more quantitative by incorporating experimental details, mathematical models or statistics; it is instead that Ecology is inherently quantitative by its very nature. At the same time, the entire world is rapidly becoming more quantitative, so that an understanding of data and quantitative methods helps students navigate increasingly complex news cycles and job markets. I think we have a wonderful educational opportunity to incorporate quantitative reasoning and data literacy within the ecology curriculum.
as to whether they should also be required to take calculus and stats, im emphatically in the yes column. the more math the better, if only to try and address the severe deficit in their educational background. cheers Michael Marchetti Fletcher Jones Professor of Ecology St Marys College of California
