A few posts back Heraclides referred to a kitten born with two heads – you may well have seen it on TV news the other night. (If you google ‘two-headed kitten’ you’ll find this wasn’t a unique birth. I remember we had a two-headed calf in the zoology museum at Massey, when I was a […]
Continue readingCategory: scholarship biology
the natural history of the eye
Well, here I am back in the office again. The conference was great – but it was on assessment in the tertiary education system: not something you want to hear about here 🙂 But during a break in the proceedings I slipped out & investigated the Lambton Quay bookshops… (Dangerous things, bookshops; I could easily […]
Continue readingunforseen consequences of megafaunal removal
It can be hard to predict the outcomes of human interference in an ecosystem, even when it’s done with the best of intentions. This paper looks at the unforseen consequences of removing large herbivorous mammals from part of an African savannah, & demonstrates just how complex ecosystem interactions can be.
Continue readingvolcanic eruptions & human bottlenecks
We know, from looking at the amount of genetic variation in the global human population, that it went through a fairly pronounced bottleneck around 70,000 years ago. This has been variously attributed to the founder effect, with only small populations moving out of Africa into Europe & Eurasia, and to the devastating consequences of the […]
Continue readingwind farms & bird kill
Here’s another exercise in thinking carefully about the question: wind farms & bird kills. In the US, it’s been suggested that up to 40,000 birds might be killed by flying (splat! poof!) into wind farm turbines each year. Figures like this are put forward in arguments against wind farms but – in relation to bird kills […]
Continue readingmore on the pau d’arco question
The question in question was about the proposed use of the herb pau d’arco as a prophylactic against MRSA: Evaluate the claims of the therapist, then use your biological knowledge to discuss the advice given. What are the possible evolutionary & ecological outcomes of the proposed treatment?
Continue readingthinking carefully about the question
We spend quite a bit of time on critical thinking during the Schol preparation days. This is because of the need – identified by the examiner’s report every year – for candidates to think critically about both the question (just what is the examiner asking me to do?) and their response to it (what, of all […]
Continue readingthe joys of essay-marking (no, seriously)
One of the benefits of reading (& marking) students’ essays is that you find a whole pile of new papers that are worth reading. (I expect them to go to the scientific literature for information & examples, and support for their ideas, & I will confess to getting just a leetle tetchy when they don’t….) […]
Continue readingread the question!
I know I’ve said this before. And your teachers will have said it too. But – read the question! Why am I saying this again? Because I’m marking essays at the moment & I seem to be writing that phrase rather more often than I’d like. When I set a question, whether it’s for a […]
Continue readingdeconstructing ‘processes & patterns of evolution’
A while ago my friend Heather, who’s a biology teacher, asked if I would write something on answering questions in the ‘processes & patterns of evolution’ paper (AS90717). Here you are, Heather – I finally got around to it 🙂
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