Evolutionary Biology
Why don’t frogs have wings? When did the first eye evolve? The answers to these questions exemplify how evolutionary biology can be used to understand the diversity of the present day and how we can trace important traits back to their origins. In this class, we will learn about the processes that drive diversity, the constraints on evolution, and how the interplay between genes, traits, organisms, and species has sculpted the landscape of life we see today. In addition to lectures, you will read foundational and current primary literature and will lead a project that will use current tools in comparative biology to reconstruct the evolutionary history of a modern-day gene back to its origin in the distant past. (BIOL 140 or 145). 3hrs lect.