The critique assignment is described in the lab manual; this page is designed to give specific instructions for this semester and some pointers.
The assignment is to provide typed answers to the questions on pp. 79-80 of your lab manual. Please present them as answers to the questions, and give the question numbers. Present the material so that it would make sense to someone who had not seen the questions -- for example, in question 1, don't just list the hypotheses , write something like "Stern (1998) tested the hypothesis that..." Also be sure to present material so that someone who had not taken this course could understand it -- so you have to explain the technical terminology. Also note that you do have to cite the paper you critique and the textbook in a literature cited section at the end of the set of answers. Point values for the questions and literature cited section are explained in the lab manual.
The paper you are to critique, Stern, D.L. 1998. Phylogeny of the tribe Cerataphidini (Homoptera) and the evolution of the horned soldier aphids. Evolution 52:155-165, is on reserve at the library. Thus is what the lab manual calls "the research paper." When you write about it, refer to it as Stern (1998) -- this is the appropriate way to cite it -- do NOT call it the "research paper." As discussed in your lab manual, you must also refer to points made in the textbook to evaluate how well the phylogenetic study was done.
As a "warm-up" exercise, we will discuss, in the lab session during week 13, a brief made-up study; the goal for this exercise is to see how to find good and bad points to this kind of study. By week 13's lab, you need to be able to define, from your textbook, the words in boldface in this study. You should also know these for the next exam, and you will need to know several of them to read and evaluate the paper you are critiquing (Stern 1998.) Click here to read the study.
Stern (1998) uses a lot of terminology with which you may not be familiar. Once you have completed the "warm-up" exercise described in the previous paragraph, you will know more of the terms, so I recommend that you define the terms for the warm-up exercise before you start reading the paper. After doing the warm-up, you are still likely to find some that you haven't seen before. PLEASE e-mail me (or telephone me) for help with terminology. When you ask me about a term, please provide the page number it's used on, and the sentence it's used in (there are some terms that have more than one meaning and I need to know the context to be sure I give the appropriate definition.)
You will be graded on English and writing style as well as content. BE SURE to read the sections on writing style in your lab manual carefully; you must present your work in the concise, straightforward style recommended for scientific writing.