D. Croft Mammal Evolution

Date	Lecture Topics	Readings	DVD	Labs/Activities
Aug. 24, 26	Mammal osteology, zoogeography	V: Ch. 1-2, 25-26 M: i-xli	Food for thought (4:2)	Intro. to osteology (O)
Aug. 31, Sept. 2	Mesozoic mammals, monotremes	V: Ch. 3-5 W: Ch. 1-3 M: 2-7	A winning design (1:1)	Intro. to phylogenetic systematics (P)
Sept. 4*, 9	Marsupials, reproduction (Labor Day, lecture 9/4)	V: Ch. 6, 20 M: 8-67		Monotremes and marsupials (O)
Sept. 14, 16	Eulipotyphla, Afrosoricida, Macroscelidea	V: Ch. 7-8, 21, pp. 332-3 M: 68-81, 416-441	Insect Hunters (1:2)	Insectivores (O)
Sept. 21, 23	Lab (P) instead of lecture	H: Ch. 1-3, 11		Sequences and alignment (P)
Sept. 28, 30	Xenarthra, Pholidota, Tubulidentata,	V: Ch. 9, 15 M: 82-83, 114-127, 476-477,	Opportunists (2:3)	"Edentates" (O)
Oct. 5, 7	Chiroptera, echolocation	V: Ch. 10, 22 H: Ch. 4-5 M: 442-475	Life in the trees (3:2)	Neighbor-joining, drawing trees (P)
Oct. 12, 14	Scandentia, Dermoptera, Primates	V: Ch. 11, 23 M: 270-415	Social Climbers (4:1)	Primates, bats, colugos, tree shrews (O)
Oct. 19, 21	(Fall break; no lecture)	H: Ch. 6-7		Parsimony, maximum liklihood (P)
Oct. 26, 28	Carnivora	V: Ch. 12, 24 M: 478-675	Meat Eaters (2:2)	Carnivorans (O)
Nov. 2, 4	Rodentia, Lagomorpha	V: Ch. 18-19 M: 128-269	Chisellers (2:1)	Rodents and rabbits (O)
Nov. 9, 11	Artiodactyla and Perissodactyla	V: Ch. 16-17 M: 676-799	Plant Predators (1:3)	Ungulates (O)
Nov. 16, 18	Proboscidea, Sirenia, Hyracoidea, Cetacea	V: Ch. 13-14 M: 84-113, 800-873	Return to the water (3:1)	Paenungulates and cetaceans (O)
Nov. 23, 25	Extinct orders	TBD		Extinct orders (O)
Nov. 30, Dec. 2	(Final presentations)			(Final presentations)

* note special Friday class, 2:00-3:30 pm

Required Texts:

• V: Vaughan, T.A., J.M. Ryan, and N.J. Czaplewski. 2000. Mammalogy, 4th Edition. Brooks Cole.
• M: MacDonald, D.W. 2009. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Mammals. Princeton University Press.
• H: Hall, B.G. 2008. Phylogenetic Trees Made Easy: A How-to Manual, 3rd Edition. Sinauer Associates.

Other Required Reading (see syllabus):

• Wiley, E.O., D. Siegel-Causey, D.R. Brooks, and V.A. Funk. 1991. The Compleat Cladist; a Primer of Phylogenetic Procedures. University of Kansas Museum of Natural History Special Publication No. 19. This will be available as a PDF from the course web site.

Videos:

• The Life of Mammals (DVD) 2003. Hosted by David Attenborough. Four volumes, 10 parts in total. BBC. Two sets will be on reserve in Kelvin Smith: Copy 1 is on “2 Hours – Library Use Only,” whereas Copy 2 is on “3 Hours – May Leave Library.” Viewings will also take place immediately following lecture in AW Smith 29 (for the upcoming week).

Other Useful References:

• Elbroch, M. 2006. Animal Skulls: A Guide to North American Species. Stackpole Books. (A good book with nice photographs of skulls, also provides characters distinguishing different species.)

• Feldhamer, G.A., L.C. Drickamer, S.H. Vessey, and J.F. Merritt. 2004. Mammalogy: Adaptation, Diversity, and Ecology. McGraw-Hill. (An alternative mammalogy textbook.)

• Felsenstein, J. 2003. Inferring Phylogenies. Sinauer Associates, Inc. (A book detailing phylogentetics.)

• Hutchins, M., D.G. Kleiman, V. Geist, and M. C. McDade (Eds.). 2003. Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition. Volumes 12-16, Mammals I-V. Gale Group. (An excellent resource on mammals, though a bit difficult to find and quite expensive; five volumes on mammals, but others on birds, fishes, etc.)

• Kemp, T.S. 2005. The Origin and Evolution of Mammals. Oxford University Press. 331 pp. (Good resource for the information on basal mammals and non-mammalian synapsids.)

• Lawlor, T.E. 1979. Handbook to the Orders and Families of Living Mammals. Mad River Press. (Nice succinct summaries of mammal families with distinguishing characters.)

• Martin, R.E., R. Pine, and A.F. DeBlase. 2000. A Manual of Mammalogy with Keys to Families of the World, 3rd Edition McGraw-Hill. (A mammalogy lab manual with some helpful keys.)

• Nowak, M. 1999. Walker’s Mammals of the World, 6th Edition. The John Hopkins University Press. (The standard reference for information on mammals, now a two volume set of more than 2000 pages.)

• Rose, K.D., and J.D. Archibald. 2005. The Rise of Placental Mammals. The John Hopkins University Press. (A required textbook for graduate students; an edited volume with succinct yet detailed overviews of mammal ordinal diversification.)

Grading:

The points for grading are as follows; see more detailed explanations of these below:

Quizzes: Lab Reports: Species Account Species Presentation Final Exam	20 % 30 % 20 % 10 % 20 %		A: 90-100% B: 80-89% C: 70-79% D: 60-69% F: <60%
Total	100 %

Class Quizzes (20% of final grade): Most labs will begin with a short pre-test covering that week’s lecture and pre-lab readings. These will include short answer and/or multiple-choice questions. Each student’s lowest score will be dropped from the final grade. There will be no quiz on Sept. 23, Oct. 21, or Dec. 2.

Lab Reports (30% of final grade): Each lab will have activities associated with it that will result in some form of lab report. Some activities will be completed during lab, others will require additional out-of-class time. In the former case, reports will be handed in at the end of lab; in the latter case, they will be due at the beginning of lecture the following week.

Animal Diversity Web Page and Presentation (30% of final grade): The main project for the course will be authoring a mammal species page for the Animal Diversity Web (animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu). This will essentially be a literature review for a single species, presented in a format specified by the ADW site. These projects (species) will also be presented to the class orally at the end of the course as a platform talk (12 minutes plus 3 minutes of Q &A).

Final Exam (20% of final grade): A combined lecture and lab exam will take place during finals week.

Graduate Requirements: Graduate students will have additional readings, primarily from an advanced edited volume (Rose and Archibald, 2005; listed above), and will be required to do a research report on an extinct clade of mammals. Content from these supplemental readings will be incorporated into the quizzes and final exam as additional questions based on the readings. The research report will be in the form of a review article for the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (i.e., body of ca. 20 double-spaced pages, in-text citations, figures, tables, etc.). It will be weighted equally with the ADW page (i.e., each will constitute 15% of the final grade).

Handy Web Sites:

Animal Diversity Web (U. of Michigan): lots of information on specific taxa plus general information on teeth, bones, etc.

BIOSIS (OhioLINK): bibliographic service for biological sciences (including mammalogy)

GeoRef (OhioLINK): bibliographic service for geological sciences (including paleontology)

Image Library (American Society of Mammalogists): many excellent mammal photos

Mammal Crania (Dokkyo U.): a photo archive with lots of mammal crania, many of very high resolution

Mammal Species of the World (Smithsonian): taxonomy of all described species of extant mammals

Mammalian Lexicon (Michigan State): an interesting list of the meanings of family-level and higher mammal names

Mammalian Species (American Society of Mammalogists): detailed accounts (PDFs) of more than 600 species of mammals

Mammalogy Database (UMass): neat site with useful taxonomic characters and photos of mammal skulls

ISI Web of Knowledge (OhioLINK): bibliographic service for general science; mostly recent articles

Will's Skull Page (private): lots of nice mammal skull photos (many of British mammals) and descriptions

This page was last updated on August 18, 2009.