December 4: Quiz 10 will be on the hormones released from the pituitary gland.  You should know what causes their release (releasing hormones from the hypothalamus), which ones are tropic hormones and what physiological processes they regulate. Also know whether they are released from the anterior or posterior pituitary.

December 2: Please bring your computers to complete the post-exam for the Emory study.

November 23: Exam 4 will be on Chapters 35, 36 and 40.  Questions to consider for the exam include:

• You glance over near the window and notice that one of your houseplants is wilted.  What causes it to wilt and what causes it to perk up after you water it?  Explain in terms of water potential.

•  Explain the mechanisms that are involved in the bulk flow of materials from the roots to shoots of an oak tree.

•  Explain the mechanisms that are involved in the movement of sugar produced by the sugar beet and the storage of that sugar.  Indicate what organ stores the sugar.

• Explain how your body regulates its temperature.  What kind of mechanism is this called and what are the three elements of this mechanism?

Study guide is here.  There will be a review in G221 on Monday November 16th from 4:00 to 5:00 and Thursday November 19th from 3:30 to 4:30 in C23. 

November 20: Quiz 9 will be on Table 40.1, organ systems and their components and function.

November 9: Assignment (must do, not extra credit, but can be used to replace a quiz grade) You will make two bookmarks, one for science searches in which you will include the search sites and search engines that are used by biologists and other scientists.  You should have PubMed, Highwire, Google Scholar, Galileo, BioMed Central, ISI Web of Knowledge, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, JSTOR, etc. Make another Bookmark or Favorite folder for Science journals.  I expect Science, Nature, Journal of Experimental Biology, Biological Bulletin, PLOS Biology, Current Biology and pick some others in an area in which you are interested.  If you are interested in medicine and clinical biology you may want to include New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, etc

You will make a screen grab (Prnt Scrn) of your bloookmarks and paste them into a Microscoft Word document and print it out so that I can see the bookmarks that you made.

November 6: Quiz 8 will be on reading biological literature. Read Sections 1 and 2 of the Iinquiry in Action: Interpreting Scientific Papers by Buskirk and McGillin (2008).

November 2: Exam 3 will be on Chapters 31, 32, 33, and 34.1. Questions to consider for the exam include:

• What features have contributed to making arthropods the dominant animals on Earth, both in number of individuals and in number of species? What are some reasons that there are so many species of insects?
• Describe the symbiotic relationships that ants and fungi and bacteria have with one another. 
• Schistosoma mansoni causes the disorder schisotosomiasis.  It is found in 54 countries and among parasitic infections it ranks second behind malaria.  Explain the complex life cycle and discuss why it is so common and what could be done to control it.
• What are the 4 characteristics of chordates? Discuss their appearance in cephalochordata and urochordata. 

Study guide is here.  There will be a review in G221 on Monday October 26th from 4:00 to 5:00 and Thursday October 29th from 2:30 to 3:30 in C23. 

October 23: Quiz 7 will be on Chapter 6 in Writing Papers in the Biological Sciences by Victoria McMillan.  You are responsible for CSE style of citation.  Pay attention to the format of citations and literature citations. Punctuation is important. Also make sure you know what kind of material you should cite. Know the format for citing electronic sources.

October 16: Quiz 6 will be on early embryonic development, protostome and deuterostome development, and body plans.  Possible short answer questions include:

• How does development of a protostome or a deuterostome progress?
• What is the importance of the development of the bilateral body plan?
• What is the function of a coelom?

October 19: Exam 1 corrections Version A and Version B are due.

October 9: Exam 2 will be on Chapter 25, 26 and 28. Questions to consider on the exam include:

• What is the role of endosymbiosis in the eukarytic evolution and what groups of organisms arose from the endosymbiotic events?
• What are some of the effects of mutations or duplication in developmental genes on evolutionary transformations?
• Compare and contrast the life cycles of a plasmodial slime mold and a cellular slime mold?.  Why are these two clades of model organisms for study?

Other life cycles that you should know include conjugation and reproduction in paramecium and the life cycle of Chlamydomonas. Study guide is here. There will be a review in G221 on Monday October 5 from 4:00 to 5:00 and Thursday October 8 from 3:30 to 4:40 in C23. 

October 2: Quiz 5 will be on the parasitic protists: diplomonads, parabasalids, apicomplexans, and kinetoplastids.  Know their characteristics and how they function in their hosts.  The short answer will be somewhat longer.  You need to know the life cycle of Plasmodium.

September 25: quiz 4 will be on the first part of Chapter 26 up to p 543.  It will cover

• the link between classification and phylogeny
• parts of a phylogenetic tree and how  you read a phylogenetic tree
• morphlogical and molecular homologies
• homology vs. analogy
• molecular homoplasy
• monophyletic, polyphyletic and paraphyletic taxons or groups

Take a look at the inquiry box on food being sold as whale meat.  Your short answer question will taken from the information in that box.

September 18: Quiz 3 will be on the first part of Chapter 25.  Focus on the hypothetical four stages that led to the development of a simple cell (25.1), the development of the first eukaryotes (25.3), and the origin of multicellularity.

September 18: Exam 1 corrections Version A and Version B are due.

September 11: Exam 1  will be on Chapters 22, 23, and 24. Questions to consider include:(one will be on the exam). Study guide

• What is the Hardy-Weinberg equation and how is it used to test whether a population is evolving?

• What were Darwin's four observations and two inferences that he used to support his hypothesis that natural selection was a major mechanism in the evolution of species.

• Define the biological species concept.  What other concepts are used to define species and what are their limitations. Who proposed the biological species concept as a way to define species?

September 4: Quiz 2 will be on using the Hardy-Weinberg theorem. Know what characterizes a Hardy-Weinberg population and know how to determine whether a population could be evolving.

August 28: pre-test for an Inquiry based learning study.  I will discuss the study on August 26 and pass out consent forms for you to sign if you wish to participate in the study .  Taking the pre-test is optional, however you must come to class on this day with your computer if you want to earn 5 extra credit points.

August 21: Quiz 1 will be on the four Olivia Judson's NYT columns on Darwin found on the links page