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NUS Life Science Module Review: LSM1105 Evolutionary Biology

This is the semester when COVID-19 was a thing, so do take note of this when reading this module review.

Compulsory module for me, heard a lot of people complaining about the reading. After first hearing that I need to read 1 chapter (every chapter is around 40 pages btw) before every lecture, with 2 lectures per week, I complained too. Sometimes got extra reading, like some research paper that the prof posted on LumiNUS the week before to be read before certain lectures. No webcast, and attendance is “taken” by the quizzes they set for the lectures, so you have to attend lectures to get that attendance mark. Unless you have *cough* friends *cough* to help you with that (pls don’t quote me).

Personally, after reading the book, I find the topic extremely interesting. Out of all LSM mod that I have taken so far, this module’s topic is my favourite. But then I understand that most of you would like to take the Biomedical Science path, so this module may not be very relevant. The topics are on evolution (duh), but much more in depth than you have ever heard of in secondary school or high school. I was constantly intrigued by some of the things evolution does to our world, some of them are: if detrimental traits are always acted against by natural selection (and over enough time, should be lost from the population), how do we explain the existence of ageing and senescence? How did community living and colony life (for some animals) evolve (while in game theory, we know that the Nash equilibrium is always for both party to cheat)? These are but a few of the topics that interested me the most. If these questions interest you as well, you will have a great time reading the book. For me, most chapters did not feel like 40 pages at all as I enjoyed reading those chapters.

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