BIOL 300 Evolution

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The process of evolution unifies all life on Earth. In this course, we learn how to study the evolutionary process that produced—and continues to influence—the patterns of organismal diversity we see today. Topics include: the history of evolutionary thought, pre-Darwin to present; the genetic origins of phenotypic variation; species formation and hybridization; estimating phylogenetic relationships; as well as human evolution and evolutionary medicine. In the lab, we apply the scientific method to key questions in evolutionary biology, evaluating patterns in both publicly available data and in data we generate ourselves.