BIOL 120: Animal Systems



BIOL 120 served for years as the segue course into our majors' degree tracks. The course covers all aspects of animal biology, including basic evolutionary patterns and systematic relationships, anatomy and physiology, and ecological relationships.

This was a large, introductory course that often enrolled large numbers of students. As a student, you need to be sure to attend all lectures and all scheduled laboratory sections. BIOL 120 is (for better or worse) a "weed-out" course, meaning that this is the kind of course where a student's devotion to, and general interest in, the discipline of Biology will be challenged. In my experience, the struggle that most students have with this course is not the difficulty of the material itself; rather, students seem to struggle more with the pace of material, the large lecture environment and the fact that attendance in lecture is not required, and the requirement of actually learning the concepts presented and not simply memorizing facts and terms.

BIOL 120 and BIOL 121 have been replaced by BIOL 150 (Biology I) and BIOL 151 (Biology II).

Click here for a recent BIOL 120 syllabus



Click here for a sample writing assignment and grading sheet from BIOL 120

(Link for Shubin et al. 2006 paper addressed in this writing assignment

(Link for Daeschler et al. 2006 paper addressed in this writing assignment



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