Background reading: Gale Virtual Reference Library. Combines hundreds of academic encyclopedias; has useful bibliographies
Database for magazine and peer reviewed journal articles: EBSCO (All Databases); includes Academic Search Complete--a database that covers all fields and disciplines, and includes both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources--General Science Full Text, and MEDLINE, a comprehensive database for research in biology and the medical sciences
Database for peer reviewed articles in biology and the medical sciences: Pubmed; Pubmed includes everything in MEDLINE, plus articles that haven't been indexed yet there and articles submitted by publishers “ahead of print.”
Database for magazines, peer reviewed articles, and books: Onesearch
Citation Databases: Google Scholar and Web of Science. Both will indicate how many times a given article has been cited.
Searching tips:
and: all terms must be in the items searched. Adaptation and fitness will only retrieve items containing both terms.
or: just one of the terms needs to be in the items search. Adaptation or fitness will retrieve items containing either term or both terms.
The asterisk (*) truncates. Adapt* will retrieve adapt, adapted, and so forth.