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Study unifying principles of biology

Evolutionary Biology and Ecology

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Are you ready to learn how toxic chemicals may be related to human health problems? Or do you want to learn more about animal adaptation to human environments? And are you interested in ecosystem modelling?

Via studying the unifying principles of biology, the programme provides an in-depth treatment of selected topics in modern biological sciences, in such a way that students are stimulated to pursue their further studies in a specialized graduate programme focused on one of these topics. At the same time, this minor provides a broad basis for pursuing a general biology graduate programme combined with a professional career in education or science communication.

Related VU master’s programmes: 

Ecology and Evolution 

Bioinformatics and Systems Biology

Environment and Resource Management

Overview courses

  • Ecosystem Modelling

    Translates acquired understanding of ecosystems, climate and carbon cycling into an ecosystem model to quantify current ecological processes as well as to project these into the future.

  • Environmental Toxicology

    Offers an in depth insight into the recognition, analysis and prediction of environmental and human health problems caused by toxic chemicals.
     

  • Sustainable Landscape Challenges

    Develops a management plan for a Dutch landscape by integrating the challenges posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen deposition, salinization, and soil subsidence in line with existing (inter)national legislation.   

  • Behavioural Biology

    Studies animal behaviours from their developmental, functional and mechanistic angles, to understand how behaviours evolve and allow animals to adapt to novel environments. 

  • Evolutionary Genetics

    Explores the mechanisms and consequences of genome evolution in prokaryotes and eukaryotes to examine how genotypic and phenotypic variation arise and are maintained in viruses, microorganisms, and multicellular organisms.

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