Overview
As a high school or undergraduate, Biological Sciences teacher, you can use this set of computer-based tools to teach about natural selection, its role in evolution and climate change as a selective pressure in natural selection. This lesson plan will enable the students to understand Darwin's theory of natural selection. They will learn how organisms such as pocket mice and Snowshoe hares respond to changes in the environment and climate. The lesson plan will allow students to understand climate change as a selective pressure in natural selection and how it plays a role in the evolutionary rescue of a species that would otherwise be endangered due to climate change.
Thus, the use of this lesson plan allows you to integrate the teaching of a climate science topic with a core topic in the Biological Sciences.
Grade Level: High School, Undergraduate
Discipline: Biological Sciences
Topics: Natural Selection, Selective Pressure, Evolution, Speciation,Evolutionary Hotspots, Genetic Polymorphism, Genetic Variants, Allelic Frequencies
Climate Topic: Climate and the Biosphere
Location: Global
Languages: English
Access: Online (some material can be downloaded for offline use)
Duration: 40-60 min
Learning outcomes
The tools in this lesson plan will enable students to:
- explain Darwin's theory of natural selection
- explain changes in gene frequencies over successive generations due to a selective advantage
- understand how natural selection affects biodiversity
- describe the role of different selective pressures on the evolution of a species