Biol 36
Chris Gillen
Lecture outline 1

Goals of the class - Students should:
understand the diversity of form and function among animals

• we will study the form of many animal phyla
• where possible, we will correlate form with function and with temporal and spacial distribution of animals

understand the evolutionary history of animals and evaluate proposed phylogenetic trees

• we will study different classification methodologies and schemes
• we will examine the types of evidence used to construct phylogenetic trees

be able critically evaluate to critically evaluate scientific literature in the field of animal biology

• for the course project, each student will perform a semester-long in-depth analysis of a
• scientific paper in animal biology

A major theme of this class will be understanding how animals are classified.
Most biologists believe that classification should reflect evolutionary (descent) relationships.
Why is classification important?

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