Aim of the course is to provide the students with a broad and scientifically rigorous view of the marine biodiversity and its anthropogenic treats. The course focuses on the three levels of biodiversity organization (genetic-populational, specific, ecosystemic), considering for each one the mechanisms that mould biodiversity patterns, the anthropic impacts and treats, the conservation strategies. Particular regard will be deserved to the ecosystem functioning and management, which is a main trend in marine conservation. Since biodiversity organization levels are highly interdependent and cascading effects are regularly implicated in the outcome of human impacts, the course aims to develop the students' ability to build-up connections and to manage multiple-level information. To this end each lesson is structured in a theoretical part and another one that involves the examination of numerous case studies. Finally, conservation biology has an interdisciplinary nature and therefore an important objective of the course is to train students to simultaneously manage information, approaches and methodologies that derive from very diverse fields such as biology, ecology, modelling, law, sociology.
The course will provide the basis for further specialistic studies in applied ecology, conservation of marine biodiversity and sustainable environmental management.

The course focuses on the following learning objectives:
- knowledge of the nature and organization of biodiversity;
- knowledge of mechanisms generating biodiversity patterns;
- knowledge of human impacts that cause loss of biodiversity;
- knowledge of the main biodiversity conservation strategies;
- ability to discern between natural patterns and patterns of anthropogenic origin;
- multi-scale and interdisciplinary reasoning skills;
- ability to apply acquired knowledge and skills to real problems.