View a FREE sample

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Why was the thylacine killed off?

2. What advice did Darwin receive from his friends, with regard to Wallace's work?

3. What is a trophic cascade?

4. How long after the eruption did it take for 271 species to be counted at Krakatau?

5. What surprising dispersal ability does Quammen say elephants have?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe how Quammen's narrative progresses from one idea to the next.

2. What are the different terms Quammen describes for how people have accounted for the degradation of ecosystems?

3. What does Quammen say about the overall pattern of the Persian rug?

4. How did David Wallace make his start as a biologist, in Quammen's narrative?

5. What examples does Quammen use of dispersal ability?

6. What is archipelago speciation?

7. List the attributes that govern the survivability of individual species in island ecosystems.

8. Describe Quammen's tone in the first chapter.

9. Who is Frank Preston, and what was his contribution to the discussion of island size and species count?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the genre of 'The Song of the Dodo'? Is it a travel narrative? Is it primarily a memoir? A book-length article about a scientific field? Is it a scientific treatise?

Essay Topic 2

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

Essay Topic 3

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

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 731 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample