| 1 |
Tuesday, April 4 |
Where the animals go. How do we know what we know? Fear and death on the Serengeti — the great migrations. |
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| 1 |
Thursday, April 6 |
Where the animals go, part 2. The bar-tailed godwit and its 10,000 km nonstop journey. Humpback whales, from Alaska to Maui. |
Homework 1 Released |
| 2 |
Tuesday, April 11 |
Keystone species and trophic cascades. Robert Paine’s wonderful seastar experiment on a tiny patch of reef in the Pacific Northwest. Otters and the Aleutians. |
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| 2 |
Thursday, April 13 |
The species question. The distribution of species in space and time. Island biogeography and the puzzle of amphibians on oceanic islands. |
Homework 2 Released, Homework 1 Due |
| 3 |
Tuesday, April 18 |
The whale. On the imperfections of the fossil record. On the perfections of the fossil record. |
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| 3 |
Thursday, April 20 |
The whale, part 2. DNA as a document of evolutionary history. The hidden story of whale evolution in DNA. |
Homework 3 Released, Homework 2 Due |
| 4 |
Tuesday, April 25 |
The ingredients of evolution. Heritable variation. The forces of evolution such as selection and drift. |
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| 4 |
Thursday, April 27 |
The evolution of eye color. A population genetic view of eye color evolution, and the surprising reach of the coin flip idea. |
Homework 4 Released, Homework 3 Due |
| 5 |
Tuesday, May 2 |
What is life? Musings on the secret of life. Life and its entropic destiny. |
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| 5 |
Thursday, May 4 |
Eating the sun. How living organisms make a living. Biological batteries, with a special emphasis on the proton motive force. |
Homework 5 Released, Homework 4 Due* |
| 6 |
Tuesday, May 9 |
Turning sugar into a cell. Big data and the proteome. The proteome by pure thought. A first look at gene regulation. |
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| 6 |
Thursday, May 11 |
An interlude on probability as the language of reason, and the language of biology. Boltzmann, statistical mechanics, and binding. Gene regulation continued. |
Homework 6 + 7 Released, Homework 5 Due |
| 7 |
Tuesday, May 16 |
Blood. The complete blood count test. The many cell types of the blood. Becoming a blood cell. |
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| 7 |
Thursday, May 18 |
Blood, part 2. Myoglobin, hemoglobin — great molecular celebrities of modern science. |
Homework 6 Due |
| 8 |
Tuesday, May 23 |
The crazy world of single-celled eukaryotes. From toxoplasma to Chlamydomonas. A most beautiful experiment! Size control in biology, with special reference to the flagellum. |
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| 8 |
Thursday, May 25 |
Locomotion of snakes, worms, and lizards. Taming the gait. Geometric phases. |
Homework 8 Released, Homework 7 Due |
| 9 |
Tuesday, May 30 |
Human impacts. Global biodiversity. Land use. How cows work. |
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| 9 |
Thursday, June 1 |
Guest lecture by Prof. John Terborgh. |
Homework 9 Released, Homework 8 Due |
| 10 |
Tuesday, June 6 |
Summary of our adventure. The place of life in the universe. The place of biology in science. The place of curiosity and joy in our lives. |
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| 10 |
Thursday, June 8 |
No lecture. |
Homework 9 Due |
