1.3 -Ecology & Evolution

Students will be able to analyze critically and apply the major principles of ecology and evolution.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t overly excited to start my first Intro to Ecology and Evolution class. I had no interest in studying anything about the environment because I had always wanted to work in the healthcare industry. But even after the first few weeks, I was aware that I was in error. One of my favorite classes at Longwood was Introduction to Ecology and Evolution. I was able to examine Farmville’s human population during this course, which gave me the chance to compare the health of people in 1950 to that of people today. People died at earlier ages back then than they do now for a variety of reasons, but one of the majors was that health care wasn’t widely available and that many medicines hadn’t yet been found as they have been in the modern human body.

After taking Intro to Ecology I learned to build a interest in wanting to learn more so therefore continue n taking Ecology and Evolution which I had the opportunity to allowing me to continue my research on how climate change is affecting the Chesapeake Bay, a location I visited as a freshman through the LIFE STEM program. Even though the topic of my research on human demography in my introduction to ecology class was unrelated to ecology and evolution, it still shows how much my interest in biology has advanced and that I am now less concerned with the human impact on the environment. Focusing on the issue of climate change impacting an ecosystem became more relative in the future since the resources provided by the Chesapeake Bay are so efficient, we need to be concerned about protecting them.