Evolution, Species, and Biogeography

This course will explore the three major themes of Evolution, Species, and Biogeography from their historical antecedents to modern ideas. The course will provide the student with a full understanding of the ideas that shape current thinking in organismic biology and advance the dialogue in systematics, ecology, biodiversity, and conservation. The structure of the course will be a web based asynchronous course, which will lead the student to the discovery of ideas based on extensive but guided readings and interpretation of key primary and secondary literature on the three interrelated themes. Important guiding ideas will be presented in forum format in which the student will be an active participant. Guiding principles will include the notion of the biological species concept and that the species has a unique ecological role and longevity, and may occupy a specific geographic region. This concept will be linked to the evolutionary ideas of descent with modification, monophyletic taxa, and the attempt to understand both the current and historic distribution of the world's flora and fauna. At least two models, dispersion and vicariance, will be used to

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