Level Biology Coursework

Not every student is interested in biology because it is a difficult science. It is not easy to study biology and it is twice harder to write level biology coursework. Below is a short sample of level biology coursework written about Darwin and natural selection. It is a qualitative coursework without any calculations. It is posted here to provide you with a basic idea on coursework writing in general and flow of ideas in particular. You may also review tips on history coursework and AS biology coursework writing.

Level Biology Coursework: Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin in 1859 explained evolution after a different fashion. Species do not survive because of adaptation, but evolve and change. From impartial and dispassionate observation it can be shown that they vary with time and according to the place and the influence of various circumstances, or perchance through instability in the species, and such variations become permanent or vanish through natural selection. Fit offspring resist and the unfit become extinct. The same thing occurs in the wild state as may be observed in the breeding of domestic creatures, so carefully studied by Darwin. It amounts to selecting suitable individuals for the purposes of transmission and thus to fix the most suitable characters for getting races which become step by step stronger and more efficient.

Natural selection is merely the possibility, or impossibility, that a species has of living in a particular manner. By evolution and variation of the species, only those will survive which find the conditions necessary for their existence in their more or less immediate world where they are in the course of development. An individual is always affected by surrounding circumstances. It may be that it win disappear in the course of its life through incompatibility of the environment or that it may withstand conditions; obviously if all the individuals disappear then so also does the species, or the line of the species may be so influenced at the end of a few generations that it gradually becomes weaker and weaker to the point of extinction; or, on the other hand, if the environment be favourable, the species will develop and expand in profusion. The environment, the factor of natural selection, and equally the properties of the species will determine the latter's fate. This same natural selection will explain also the origin of those species now extant.

According to the Darwinian theory, environment has no influence on the production of forms. These make their appearance independently from the medium and eventually, according to whether the forms are suitable or not, selection dictates their destiny. It is obvious that the Darwinian idea differs entirely from that of Lamarck. According to Lamarck, the whale takes the form of a fish because it lives in the sea, whilst according to Darwin it lives in the sea because it has the form of a fish. Darwin does not deny that the surroundings may exert an influence on living creatures, but he does not consider such effect when explaining the production of shapes nor of any other of the biological characteristics of the various species. Genetic factors alone are decisive, and natural selection works on the differences resulting therefrom.