Circumstances find you marooned on a small but biodiverse tropical island, with the prospect of probably being there for a long time. There seems to be an adequate supply of food, but you want to minimize your impact to make certain that the ecosystem can keep you fed on a continuing basis. To assure this, what trophic level should you take your food from?

In what is certainly sincere effort to address world hunger, the American Cattleman's association has advocated that we should encourage the production of beef and other meat products, which have higher concentrated nutritional value. They argue that if there are hungry people in the world, the most efficient way to feed them is to help them afford more meat in their diet. Critique their argument.

In the early 1800's French biologist Jean Baptist Lamark proposed that organisms inherited traits which their parents had acquired over their lifetimes. For example, the giraffe which stretched out its neck in an effort to get food would pass on a loner neck to its offspring. This explained why animals only evolved in ways that benefited them. When Darwin wrote his theory of evolution, he still accepted some tenets of Lamark's thesis. Critique what is known as "Lamarkian Evolution".