The successul student will be able to:
- define evolution, and discriminate between evolutionary change and other changes in time;
- understand the applications of evolutionary biology in fields such as medicine and agriculture;
- apprehend the contribution of fossil, morphological, physiological, and molecular genetic studies in understanding the past;
- distinguish between genetic drift and natural selection as causes of evolutionary change;
- interpret phylogenetic tress, the common ancestor concept, make inferences from trees, and understand the use of molecular clocks;
- understand the role of random processes in evolution and the role of sampling effects, or population size, in genetic drift;
- predict possible evolutionary outcomes in particular situations;
- predict the types of mutations that can underlie different types of evolutionary and phenotypic change;
- become familiar with terminology such as silent, neutral, beneficial and detrimental mutations, gene duplications, horizontal gene transfer;
- distinguish between different types of natural selection, with respect to fates of alleles, or effects on phenotypes;
- describe major patterns in evolution, such as convergent evolution and evolutionary constraints;
- suggest experiments to study evolutionary change;
- understand the molecular bases of complex adaptations;
- describe the major changes that the Earth and its life forms underwent within the last 4.5 billion years;
- understand current models of spontaneous evolution of early life forms, chemical evolution, and the RNA world hypothesis;
- develop hypotheses on the molecular and population processes underlying evolutionary phenomena.