BIOL 297 - Topics in Biology

Credits: 3 in fall, winter; 4 in spring
Planned Offering: Fall, Winter, Spring

Prerequisites vary with topic. Topic in Spring 2012:

BIOL 297-01: Field Botany (4). An entirely outdoor course, including some strenuous hiking, in which students learn to identify vascular plants using professional “floras” of the upper Shenandoah Valley watershed The conservation biology of many of these plants is discussed focusing upon alien invasive and rare plants of the upper Chesapeake Bay watershed. With no formal lectures in the course, students work with the group to identify plants as each student accumulates an annotated reference collection (a herbarium) of plants. The class reads and discusses several professional papers dealing with conservation problems caused by alien plants and the conservation ecology of rare plants. Some strenous hiking involved. (SL) Knox.

Topic in Winter 2012:

BIOL 297-01: Acquiring Energy: Feeding, Digestion & Metabolism (3). Prerequisite: BIOL 111. An introduction to the physiology of the mammalian digestive system and human nutrition. We begin with the anatomy and physiology of the digestive tract, then examine the digestion and absorption of foods in the major nutrient categories, including proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and water, and discuss feeding mechanisms in a variety of mammalian species and evolution of the human diet. Students analyze nutrition information found in popular media, conduct an analysis of their own nutritional intake, and write a term paper based on the current research literature. Gibber. Winter 2012

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