Deadline
for Outline: Friday, October 26 (or before)
The outline should include the overall structure of the essay (e.g., introduction, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, conclusion) AND a collection of ideas that you plan to cover in the different parts.
Deadline for the 1st Draft: November 15th
TOPIC FOR ESSAY:
What are the units of natural selection?
Genes, Organisms, Communities
Items to think about:
- Selfishness,
parasitism and altruistic cooperation within the human genome.
- Can
ecological terms be used to describe interactions at the gene and genome level?
- To what extent can/need genes be considered as the unit for selection?
- How do species become more fit?
- Is evolution driven by selfishness and competition (nature red in tooth and claw), or by cooperation (symbiosis, lichen, kefir endosymbionts)
- Frequently competition for resources acting at a level of subunits is counterproductive: e.g., selfish cells in a metazoan turn into cancer, in social insects there is no or little competition between members of the same state (and frequently they are genetically identical). Can/could this be different at the gene level?
- Should there be a distinction between selfish and parasitic genes? Altruism can be a form of selfishness (I help you, you help me, life is not a zero sum game). According to Richard Dawkins all genes are selfish, even the ones cooperating with each other.
Suggested reading: