BIOL101: General Biology
Lecture/Discussion T 5:30-9:45
Labs M 6:20-9:30 Room 422
M6:20-9:30 Room 429
Th6:20-9:30 Room 422
Contact Info
•Dr. Cal Young
•Office 411-17
•Office Hours - M 3:00-5:00, T 1:00-4:30
•714-992-7434
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Text
•Campbell’s Essential Biology with Physiology
•Simon, Dickey, Hogan, Reece
•5th edition
Syllabus
•Important info
•Policies
•Changes
•Course Website (different from MasteringBiology site)
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Info cards (4 x 6 index card)
Name
Picture
e-mail address
Future goals
Something interesting about yourself
Favorite movie
Favorite physical activity
Major topics, concerns, questions in biology
Why are you taking this course?
MasteringBiology
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•Access with the access card included with the new text or ...
•purchase access through the website
•Each assignment has two parts and serves many purposes
•Checks your understanding of the previous chapter/class
•Checks your reading and understanding of the next chapter/class
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Chapter 1
Introduction: Biology Today
•We are constantly being challenged to interpret scientific information and claims
•Much of what we are faced with deals with life
•Most humans have an innate interest about life
What is Science?
•Science is a body of knowledge - a collection of unified insights about nature, the evidence for which is an array of facts
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•Science can also be defined as a way of learning - a process of coming to understand the natural world through observation, questioning, and the testing of hypotheses
Discovery Science
•We can consider two different scientific ways of learning
Discovery science
Hypothesis-driven science
Discovering new species or interactions is a very important part of biology
Often this makes use of new technology
•Recorded information is called data and data are the pieces of information on which scientific inquiry is based
•This dependence on verifiable data demystifies nature and distinguishes science from supernatural beliefs
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•Verifiable observations and measurements are the data of discovery science
Charles Darwin’s careful descriptions of the diverse plants and animals he encountered during his voyage
Jane Goodall spent decades observing and recording the behavior of chimpanzees living in Tanzania
Hypothesis-Driven Science
•Often, these discoveries lead to further questions and eventually to hypothesis-driven science
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•As a formal process of inquiry, the scientific method consists of a series of steps that provide a loose guideline for scientific investigations
Can theories be proved?
•Scientific claims must be falsifiable, meaning capable of being shown wrong through scientific inquiry
•Scientific inquiry is limited to investigating natural (as opposed to supernatural) explanations for natural phenomena
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•The unified and unifying insights of science are known as theories
•A theory is a general set of principles, supported by a large amount of evidence, that explains some aspect of the natural world
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•These are two hypotheses:
•1. White fur is an adaptation that helps polar bears survive in their Arctic habitat.
•2. The unusual bone structure in a hummingbird’s wings is an evolutionary adaptation that provides an advantage in gathering nectar from flowers.
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•In contrast, the following theory ties together those seemingly unrelated hypotheses:
•Adaptations to the local environment evolve by natural selection.
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•Is science perfect?
•In science, results are constantly being confirmed and refined
•Science is self-correcting and self-policing
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•Consider peacocks
•This seems pretty clear
•However, other scientists did not get the same results as Petrie when they tested other populations of peacocks
•Further research (2011) by Roslyn Dakin and Robert Montgomerie of Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada suggests that there is a crucial threshold number of eyespots
•Males with eyespot numbers below that threshold have a hard time attracting mates; males with eyespot numbers above the threshold do much better
•Once above that threshold, having a greater number of eyespots does not appear to be a major advantage by itself
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The Nature of Life
•Life is defined by a group of seven characteristics possessed by all living things
Living Things
•1. Are highly organized compared to inanimate objects
•2. Maintain a relatively constant internal environment
•3. Grow and develop over their lifetime
•4. Assimilate energy
•5. Respond to the environment
•6. Reproduce
•7. Evolve
•Observations and humankind’s desire to categorize and classify has led to our understanding of the hierarchy of life
OUR APPROACH TO STUDYING BIOLOGY
•Throughout the semester, we will revisit five major themes
Biology’s unifying principle
•At first glance, biology seems to be faced with an impossible task - explaining both the incredible diversity of living organisms as well as the common characteristics shared by all life
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•Biology’s chief unifying principle is evolution, the gradual modification of populations of living things over time
•This modification can result in the development of new species
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•Evolution provides the means for making sense of the diverse (endless?) forms and processes seen in living things on Earth today
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•Life evolves
•Each species is one twig on a branching tree of life that extends back through time through ancestral species that are more and more ancient
•Species that are very similar, such as the brown bear and the polar bear, share a recent common ancestor that represents a relatively recent branch point on the tree