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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is a thylacine?

2. What does David Quammen invoke as he describes cutting the rug?

3. When does a species' dispersal ability become important, according to Quammen?

4. What was Tasmania's environmental history, according to Quammen?

5. What is the difference between an isolate and a sample?

Short Essay Questions

1. What was MacArthur and Wilson's contribution to island biogeography?

2. What other Mauritius species does Quammen describe?

3. What examples does Quammen use of dispersal ability?

4. Why are islands important in ecosystem studies, in Quammen's opinion?

5. What is dispersal ability and why is it important?

6. What do we know about the dodo?

7. What factors have effectively broken the Persian rug of nature into pieces, according to Quammen?

8. What does Quammen use the island of Tasmania as an example of?

9. What concept did Wallace develop in the Malay Archipelago?

10. When did the field of island biogeography begin?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Debate the proposition that it is more important to protect an endangered monkey than it might be to protect an endangered snake.

Essay Topic 2

Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the scientific methods used to measure and assess island biogeography. What do we gain by way of insight and understanding? What patterns or trends does the data fail to account for?

Essay Topic 3

Where is the climax of this book? Are there different climaxes? What questions does each climax resolve? What questions does each climax leave unanswered?

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This section contains 800 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample