

Writing Across the Curriculum


Holloway Hall

Distribution of Plant and Animal Species
Developed by Alexis Aguilar

Pick two factors below. Write an explanation (250-350 words) on how your first factor affects or has affected the distribution of a species of plant or animal. Write another explanation (250-350 words) on how your second factor affects or has affected the distribution of a plant or animal. Note: Choose different species for each one of your chosen factors.

• The physical environment (e.g., climate, topography, soils, salinity)
• Biological interactions (e.g., predation, competition, symbiosis)
• Natural disturbance (e.g., fire, drought, flooding, wind)
• Human-caused (anthropogenic) disturbance (e.g., habitat loss, hunting, pollution)
• Current climatic change (e.g., global warming)
• Past climatic change (particularly, the coming and going of ice ages)
• Plate tectonics
• Dispersal (ability or lack of)
• Invasion by exotic species
• Evolutionary history

Response Plan
You will turn in your paper to one of your peers who will evaluate it and make comments for improvement. You will then incorporate those comments into an improved paper. Lastly, you will turn in this improved version of your paper to me along with your original paper and her/his comments. I will grade it and provide additional suggestions for improvement.

Grading Criteria (Rubric)
• Is the paper correctly formatted, clearly organized, well written, and grammatically correct? (25%)
• Is the paper written in the author’s own words and properly cited and referenced? (25%)
• Does the paper directly and clearly link the factors chosen to the precise distribution of the species selected? (25%)