The Graduate Program in Ecology (PPGECO) at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), currently rated 7 by CAPES, is a pioneering program in the northeast of Brazil, having graduated more than 260 Masters and PhDs since its creation in 1997 (all theses and dissertations can be accessed from the Zila Mamede Library (https://acervo.ufrn.br/).

PPGECO currently has 27 researchers (21 permanent and 6 collaborators) who have an extremely diverse background, having obtained their doctoral degrees from numerous renowned higher education institutions, including foreign universities (Oxford, London, Cornell, Texas, California, Oklahoma, Montpellier, Lund, Leven) and national ones (USP, UNICAMP, UFRJ, UNESP, UEM, UFG, UFPR, UFES, UFSC, UFRGS). In addition, most of the researchers have broadened their training by doing post-doctorates or sandwich internships abroad.

Recognition of the quality of the PPGECO can be gauged by the large number of candidates who have taken its annual exam in recent years, with around 60 - 100 candidates per year. In addition to students from UFRN, PPGECO has received students from Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica and numerous Brazilian higher education institutions, such as UFRJ, INPA, UNB, UFRGS, UFPA, UNISINOS, UFPE, UFRPE and UFCE. In addition, the PPGECO has had the presence of numerous post-doctoral students, including some from other countries (Italy, Portugal, Turkey, Hungary and Argentina).

PPGECO benefits from the existence of the Undergraduate Course in Ecology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, a course rated 5 by the MEC. UFRN's undergraduate course in Ecology, inaugurated in 2003, is the first federal ecology course in Brazil. The degree of student satisfaction can be seen in the results of their institutional evaluations, which generally give average marks of over 9.0 to the course lecturers.

In 2014, UFRN founded the Department of Ecology. The Department operates in a new physical space, built with funds from REUNI and UFRN. The Department occupies three floors of a building with a total area of over 1400 m2. The second floor houses a module of four rooms for postgraduate students, a room for postdoctoral students, the postgraduate secretariat, as well as teaching laboratories and a computer laboratory for 40 students. The second floor houses numerous research laboratories for shared use. The third floor houses all the Ecology Department's professors' offices. In addition, PPGECO students also use laboratories in various other departments, including the Department of Limnology and Oceanography (DOL) and the Department of Botany and Zoology (DBEZ).