Prerequisites
High school-level biology
Faculty
PI: Jonathan Marcot, Adjunct Professor EEB
PI: Karen Sears, Professor EEB and MCDB
Description of the cluster:
Charles Darwin ended his Origin of the Species with “…endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” While he got this mostly right, he missed the
mark on one key word – “endless.” Even a cursory look around the natural world reveals that the
diversity of animal form, while arguably beautiful and wonderful, is not endless. Some animal
forms have evolved repeatedly (e.g., fewer than five fingers or toes in vertebrates), while others
have never evolved (e.g., more than four limbs in vertebrates). Why this is the case remains one
of the largest outstanding questions in modern biology, and will be the focus of this module.
Through lectures, activities, and projects, students in this module will have the opportunity to
explore the evolution of animal form and how intrinsic, developmental processes have interacted
with extrinsic, selective pressures to generate its patchy distribution. Students will participate in
field trips to famous local museums (La Brea Tar Pits, Natural Museum of Natural History).
Students will also engage in hands-on, guided projects using museum collections and wet-lab
experiments. Potential projects will vary based on student interest, and may include analyses of
the morphometrics of animal skeletons, gene expression of developing animals, comparative
embryology of animals, or immunohistochemistry of animal tissues. Students will also take part
in workshops on scientific communication. Finally, students in small groups will design and
complete their own projects on some aspect of the evolution of animal form and will conclude by
presenting the results of their findings.
Final Project
Students in small groups will design and complete their own projects on
some aspect of the evolution of animal form and will conclude by presenting the results of their
findings. Students will be free to use museum collections and/or wet or dry lab approaches to
complete their projects and will be guided in project design, completion, and presentation by the
PIs and graduate students.
Possible Field Trips
We propose three, day-long field trips: Week 1 – Natural History Museum of
Los Angeles County, including collections tour, Week 2 – La Brea Tar Pits Museum, including
behind-the-scenes tour, Week 3 – Prospecting trip for fossils at local outcrops. We have
previously taken undergraduate students on similar trips with success.