Details of Term Paper Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to explore in depth an area of evolutionary biology that is particularly interesting to you and to present the results of this exploration in the form of a clearly reasoned review paper. By reading the primary literature and synthesizing it in the form of a review paper, you will gain experience in library research, critical evaluation, and writing clearly. Evolution is a broad field with extensive primary literature. During the lecture portion of this course, it will not be possible to cover most topics in depth. The term paper will give you an opportunity to read and evaluate the primary literature in a field that has attracted your attention.

You are expected to form a claim (thesis) about a significant issue in evolutionary biology. The main purpose of your paper will be to support this claim using data from the primary literature. Your claim should be synthetic and rely for support on integration of data from a variety of sources. Your paper should be at least 15 pages in length (but no more than 20) and cite a minimum of 8 references from the primary literature.