Term Paper Assignment

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Term Paper Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to explore in depth an area of evolutionary biology that is particularly interesting to you and to present the results of this exploration in the form of a clearly reasoned review paper. By reading the primary literature and synthesizing it in the form of a review paper, you will gain experience in library research, critical evaluation, and writing clearly. Evolution is a broad field with extensive primary literature. During the lecture portion of this course, it will not be possible to cover most topics in depth. The term paper will give you an opportunity to read and evaluate the primary literature in a field that has attracted your attention.


See tips for getting started for more information on choosing and researching a topic.

Organization of the paper

Because you are writing a review paper, not presenting new results, the structure of your paper will not follow the format of most of the papers you have read. Your paper should be divided up into sections as indicated below:

  • Title
  • Abstract
  • Conclusion
  • Literature Cited


Abstract-This brief section (less than a page) gives a concise, specific, balanced summary of the main points made in your paper. It should present both your thesis (i.e. main claim) and major lines of argument. Write it after you have finished a full draft of the paper.

Introduction-This section will probably be one to several pages long. The purposes of the introduction are to introduce your specific question, put it into a general framework, and provide necessary background information for the reader. If your topic is a question, state the specific question that you are asking and how you plan to answer it. Put the topic into some more general context so that your reader understands why the topic is interesting and important. For example, if your question is "Why do century plans reproduce only once, at the end of their life, while oak trees reproduce every year throughout their life?," then the context might be the ecological forces directing the evolution of different life-history strategies in plants and other organisms.

Also use this section to explain HOW you are going to go about addressing the topic. Being clear on the structure of the paper from the beginning will make it easier for the reader to follow your arguments. In the above example, you might state that you are going to 1) summarize several hypotheses specific to long-lived organisms, 2) place long-lived organisms in the more general context of the r-selection/k-selection, 3) briefly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each hypothesis, and finally 4) argue for a particular one of these hypotheses to explain the century plant and oak patterns.






