Galapagos novel deals with a fictional account of the future evolution of humans. You have been reading this
book throughout the semester, and I hope you have been thinking about how the material from our
lectures relates to the book.
For this assignment you will write a 5-7 page (double-spaced) paper. You will not need to provide any
citations or do any further outside research. The book and the lecture material should provide you will
all of the information you need to complete the paper. Please do a thorough job, however. Notice that
this paper is worth almost as much as an exam. You can significantly improve your grade by doing
well on this paper.
Things you must include in the paper:
1. First, provide a brief summary of the events of the book. You do not need to go into very fine
detail here. This should not be the bulk of your paper.
2. Choose one force of evolution (natural selection, gene flow, mutation, or genetic drift) and
describe how this force contributed to the descendants of the modern humans 1 million years
into the future. In short, you should describe how this force directly affected the evolution of
humans into the future. You may discuss more than one force, but you must focus primarily on
one for your discussion/argument.
3. Assess if the “humans” 1 million years into the future are a separate species from us today.
Explain your reasons for either suggesting that they are or are not a separate species. You may
include discussion of the different species concepts of types of speciation.
4. Lastly, discuss how well Vonnegut (the author) did in applying Darwinian evolution to his
novel. What did he get right? What did he get wrong.
Wrap everything up with a nice, concise conclusion, and you’ll be on your way to boosting your grade.
No funny tricks with font sizes and margins. Just stick to a standard 12 point font and the default
margin settings on your word processor. I will notice any attempts to adjust that too much. While I may
not deduct points directly for that issue, you are unlikely to have a very good paper if you are resorting
to margin-fiddling to get to the paper length.
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|