Even at the cellular level, biology studies a number of complex and interesting phenomena. For a simpler, more anatomical term paper you could compare cellular structures across different types of life forms. Plant and animal cells, for instance, are different in many interesting ways and, even within a single kingdom, different species can exhibit slight but important cellular differences. Discuss these differences and how they contribute to the different life processes of the organisms as a whole. For an added challenge, explore cells at a genetic level to investigate the most recent findings in biological genetic coding. You could discuss, for instance, the most recent theories on what causes mutations or mistakes when the genetic code is copied during cell division, different hypotheses on what causes the rapid cell division in cancerous tumors or how cell division changes as an organism grows older.
Given the increase in environmental studies as of 2010, biological research has begun to focus more on the area and greatly expanded our understanding of ecology and ecosystem dynamics. The effects of pollution and environmental change on living organisms has already generated extensive studies and literature to consult when writing a term paper. Focus, for instance, on a specific pollutant, such as mercury, and study how it enters living organisms, moves through the food chain and its effects on exposed organisms. You could also discuss ecological dynamics on a broader scale by selecting a specific ecosystem and discussing the ecological relationships within it, such as the biological oxygen demand of waterways, food-chain relationships and population growth or the specific role of a keystone species that keeps the entire ecosystem functioning. Lastly, efforts to recover damaged ecosystems also have generated extensive literature on the dynamics of how invasive species enter an ecosystem or how life slowly returns to heavily damaged environments, all of which could make for an interesting term paper topic.
While the theory of evolution is a broad area, choosing a specific feature of an organism, such as a toucan's beak, a cicada's life cycle or the human brain, and discussing the possible evolutionary explanations and advantages of its development, could make for an interesting term paper. Additionally, you could discuss the process of microevolution and natural selection through the changes in a specific population in response to a specific environmental change, perhaps even citing laboratory recreations of microevolution with microorganisms placed in changing environments.
For those less interested in the biological sciences, the field also includes a number of themes more related to social issues that might be of more interest. A term paper on the debate between biological differences between men and women, for example, could be interesting. Are gender differences entirely caused by learned social behaviors or do some biological factors predetermine some tendencies? A great deal of research exists on the issue and such a topic could have both scientific depth and broad social implications for students more interested in the humanities.