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BIOL 110 - Evolution and Diversity: Paper II

BIOL 110 - Ecology, Evolution, Conservation Biology and The Environment: Paper II

Select and report on one of the recently published papers below. Some articles below are not available online. Please get a copy of those articles from the Bay College Library or inquire about other options. Be guided by your own interests. Format etc. are as before, refer to your writing syllabus.


Published Papers Online


Published Papers

  • Evolving threat: New variants have changed the face of the pandemic. What will the virus do next? Kai Kupferschmidt. Science. 20 Aug 2021 : 844-849.
  • The Body Against Itself.  Special Report on Autoimmune Disease. Scientific American. September 2021.
  • Deadly Kingdom: Killers of 1.6 million people every year, fungi are emerging as some of the most lethal microbes on the planet, and we don’t really know how to stop them. Maryn McKenna. Scientific American. June 2021.
  • Silent Scourge: Microplastics in Water, Food, and Air.  Cheryl Lyn Dybas. BioScience.  December 2020.
  • Pitfalls of Tree Planting Show Why We Need People-Centered Natural Climate Solutions.  Forrest Fleischman, et al. BioScience. November 2020. pp. 947-950.
  • Fence Ecology: Frameworks for Understanding the Ecological Effects of Fences. Alex McInturff, et al. BioScience. November 2020. pp. 971-985.
  • The Jaw Epidemic: Recognition, Origins, Cures, and Prevention.  What are the causes and consequences of the growing prevalence of crooked teeth? Sandra Kahn, et. al. BioScience. September 2020. pp. 759-771.
  • Biologists Discovering the Value of Artificial Intelligence: From dolphins to diatoms, AI streamlines research. Gail Dutton. BioScience. September 2020. pp. 729-735.
  • A Severe Lack of Evidence Limits Effective Conservation of the World’s Primates. Jessica Junker, et al.  BioScience. September 2020. pp. 794-803.
  • LED Flashlight technology facilitates wild meat extraction across the tropics. Mark Bowler, et. al. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. November 2020. Pp 489-495.
  • Rewilding of Fukashima’s human evacuation zone. Phillip C. Lyons, et. al. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. April 2020. Pp 127-134.
  • How Evolution Helps Us Understand Cancer and Control It: Cells need to cooperate to coexist in people, and when some break the rules, cancer results.  Athena Aktipis. Scientific American. January 2021.
  • Inequality before Birth Contributes to Health Inequality in Adults: Improving newborn health is more essential now than ever. Janet Currie. Scientific American. October 2020.
  • What Ancient Mass Extinctions Tell Us about the Future: Carbon dioxide has done plenty of damage before. Peter Brannen. Scientific American. September 2020.
  • How Oak Trees Evolved to Rule the Forests of the Northern Hemisphere: Genomes and fossils reveal their remarkable evolutionary history. Andrew L. Hipp, Paul S. Manos and Jeannine Cavender-Bares. Scientific American. August 2020.
  • Humans Evolved to Be Friendly: Cooperation made Homo sapiens the last human species standing. Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods. Scientific American. August 2020.
  • How Climate Change Strategies That Use Biomass Can Be More Realistic. Current plans for drawing down carbon dioxide call for more trees, grasses and crop residues than Earth can spare. Eric Toensmeier and Dennis Garrity. Scientific American. August 2020.
  • How a 380-Million-Year-Old Fish Gave Us Fingers: A remarkable fossil reveals that the digits in our hands evolved before vertebrates emerged from the water to colonize land. John A. Long and Richard Cloutier. Scientific American. June 2020.
  • How 'Sustainable' Development Ravaged the Congo Basin: Pygmies and wildlife coexisted for millennia—until conservation coupled with extractive industries arrived. Jerome Lewis. Scientific American. May 2020.
  • The Hidden Toll of Wildfires: A huge aerial campaign seeks to understand the effects of biomass smoke on human health. Kyle Dickman. Scientific American. March 2020.
  • What Is Really Killing Monarch Butterflies? Some scientists suspect that Roundup and milkweed loss aren’t the only culprits. Gabriel Popkin. Scientific American. March 2020.
  • Why We Have So Many Problems with Our Teeth: Our choppers are crowded, crooked and riddled with cavities. It hasn’t always been this way. Peter S. Ungar. Scientific American. April 2020.
  • Why Your Brain Needs Exercise: The evolutionary history of humans explains why physical activity is important for brain health. David A. Raichlen and Gene E. Alexander. Scientific American. January 2020.
  • Hawaii as a Microcosm: Advancing the Science and Practice of Managing Introduced and Invasive Species. LISA PEJCHAR, CHRISTOPHER A. LEPCZYK, JEAN E. FANTLE-LEPCZYK, STEVEN C. HESS, M. TRACY JOHNSON, CHRISTINA R. LEOPOLD, MICHAEL MARCHETTI, KATHERINE M. MC


  • Agriculture and Climate Change Bioscience Oct 2019.


  • Science of Aging BioScience Nov 2019.


  • Genetically Engineering Wild Mice to Combat Lyme Disease: An Ecological Perspective. ALLISON A. SNOW. BioScience. September 2019.


  • Side-swiped: Ecological cascades emanating from earthworm invasions. Lee E Frelich, Bernd Blossey, Erin K Cameron, Andrea Dávalos, Nico Eisenhauer, Timothy Fahey, Olga Ferlian, Peter M Groffman, Evan Larson, Scott R Loss, John C Maerz, Victoria Nuzzo, Kyu


  • When pets become pests: the role of the exotic pet trade in producing invasive vertebrate animals. Julie L Lockwood, Dustin J Welbourne, Christina M Romagosa, Phillip Cassey, Nicholas E Mandrak, Angela Strecker, Brian Leung, Oliver C Stringham, Bradley Ud


  • Darwin’s Cancer Fix: Principles of evolution and natural selection drive a radical new approach to drugs and prevention strategies. By James DeGregori and Robert Gatenby. Scientific American. August 2019.


  • The Ecological Paw Print of Companion Dogs and Cats. Pim Martens, Bingtao Su, and Samantha Deblomme. BioScience. June 2019.


  • Rough Weather Ahead: Recent disasters show how climate change is making winter storms, flooding rains and summer heat waves more extreme. By Jennifer Francis. Scientific American. June 2019.


  • The Rise of Animals: New fossils and analyses of ancient ocean chemistry reveal the surprisingly deep roots of the Cambrian explosion. By Rachel A. Wood. Scientific American. June 2019.


  • A deadly amphibian disease goes global: Chytrid infection is linked to the decline of more than 500 amphibian species. By Dan A. Greenberg and Wendy J. Palen. Science. 29 March 2019.


  • Humans Evolved to Exercise: Unlike our ape cousins, humans require high levels of physical activity to be healthy. By Herman Pontzer. Scientific American. January 2019.


  • Scrubbing Carbon from the Sky: Can we remove enough CO2 from the atmosphere to slow or even reverse climate change? By Richard Conniff. Scientific American. January 2019.


  • Are Antarctica’s Glaciers Collapsing? Rapid glacier retreat could put coastlines underwater sooner than anticipated. By Richard B. Alley. Scientific American. February 2019.


  • Re-engineering the Colorado River to Save the Grand Canyon: Can dam releases that mimic natural flows restore the Grand Canyon ecosystem? By Heather Hansman. Scientific American. February 2019.


  • Spotting Evolution Among Us: The half-million people in the UK Biobank hold the genetic legacy of Neanderthals—and clues to how we are still evolving. By Ann Gibbons. Science. 4 January, 2019.


  • Seeing the Dawn: Evidence lines up to offer a new view of how life on our planet may have emerged. By Robert Service. Science. 11 January, 2019.


  • Cracking the Cambrian: New fossils and sites are helping make sense of the mysterious flowering of animal life half a billion years ago. Joshua Sokol. Science. 23 November 2018.


  • Historical and potential future importance of large whales as food for polar bears. Kristin Laidre, Ian Stirling, James Estes, Anatoly Kochnev, and Jason Roberts. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. November 2018.


  • The gut microbiota at the intersection of diet and human health. C L. Gentile and T. L. Weir. (Special Issue on Diet and Health: Optimizing human metabolism.) Science. 16 November 2018. P. 776.


  • Where Have All the Turtles Gone, and Why Does It Matter? Jeffrey Lovich, Joahua Ennen, and Whitfield Gibbons. BioScience. October 2018.


  • Climate Change, Pathogens, and People: The challenges of monitoring a moving target. Lesley Evans Ogden. BioScience. October 2018.


  • Global Warming Policy: Is population left out in the cold? Population policies offer options to lessen climate risks. John Bongaarts and Brian O’Neill. Science. 17 August 2018. P. 650


  • Endangered species recovery: A resource allocation problem. Explicit articulation of values and objectives is critical. Conservation Policy Forum. Leah Gerber et al. Science. 19 October 2018. P. 284.


  • Genetically modified virus to perform gene editing of crops in planted fields. Agricultural research, or a new bioweapon system? Insect-delivered horizontal genetic alteration is concerning. Policy Forum. R. G. Reeves et al. Science. 5 October 2018. P. 35


  • Should it be Saved? Proposals to focus resources on some endangered species and let others go extinct are stirring fierce debate. Warren Cornwall. Science. 7 September 2018. P. 962.


  • Gaia 2.0. Could humans add some level of self-awareness to Earth’s self-regulation? (Sustainability Perspective) Timothy Lenton. And Bruno Latour. Science. 14 September 2018. P. 1066.


  • Early detection of invasive exotic insect infestations using eDNA from crop surfaces. Rafael Valentin, et. al. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. June 2018.


  • Beavers, Rebooted: Artificial beaver dams are a hot restoration strategy, but the projects aren’t always welcome. Ben Goldfarb. Science. 8 June, 2018.


  • Worldwide emergence of resistance to antifungal drugs challenges human health and food security. Matthew C. Fisher, Nichola J. Hawkins, Dominique Sanglard, Sarah J. Gurr. Science. 18 May, 2018.


  • Wicked evolution: Can we address the sociobiological dilemma of pesticide resistance? Fred Gould, Zachary S. Brown, Jennifer Kuzma1. Science. 18 May, 2018.


  • The Genetics of Conservation: Peering into DNA to save species and ecosystems. Cheryl Lyn Dybas. BioScience. May 2018.


  • Can we Save the Corals? Rebecca Albright. Scientific American. January 2018.


  • How snakes came to Slither. Hongyu Yi. Scientific American. January 2018.