The Department was founded in 1980 as a science branch of Faculty of Basic Sciences which then named as Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1982. The department is in the main building of the Faculty which is situated next to a very nice scenery of Seyhan Lake. The Biology Department contains 7 Professors, 4 Associate Professors, 8 Assistant Professors and 15 Research Assistants who are working in four units of Biological Sciences, namely General Biology, Molecular Biology, Botany and Zoology.

The Biology Department has currently some 500 license students, but is serving a biology education to Faculty of Agriculture and Faculty of Education, and with these Faculties, the number of total students who receive biological lectures from our Department are to reach to some 1000 students. The department has also 34 M.Sc. and 17 Ph.D. students who are currently doing their graduate studies. The numbers of graduated studies carried out so far in the Biology Department are 40 and 26 for M.Sc and Ph.D. studies, respectively. The numbers given here are to change year to year.

In the Biology Department, there are 8 research laboratories. 75 projects in various fields have been finished in the Department so far and, also 24 of new projects are still being carried out. 153 of these studies have been published in national journals while 40 of them have been published in international journals. 125 seminars, 76 posters and 1 symposium are the other activities done by the academic members of the Biology Department.

In the Biology Department there are various kinds of research interests. Besides the basic investigation of fauna and flora in our region, there are also investigations carried out to estimate different pollutants and their magnitude in the environment. The topics of the studied subjects can be named as; accumulation of heavy metals and their toxic effects in organisms, biochemical and genotoxic effects of pesticides, environmental biology, recombinant DNA technology, microbiology, plant physiology, soil biology, insect physiology, ecology and sociology of plants.

Note: This text was written in the autumn term of 1999-2000. Current situation of the Department may change in different terms.