 Read/post comments
 - rated 1 time
To rate this resource, click a star:
|
Overview:
This simple activity allows students to discover or reason through a portion of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Students use seeds from common fruits (e.g. apple seeds) to hypothesize/calculate the reproductive rate of a population, realize that such large populations do not exist, and conclude that organisms face a constant struggle to survive.Author/Source:
Access Excellence Grade level:
13-16 Time:
15-30 minutes Teaching tips:
Students should have simple graphing skills. For large classes, use a document camera to display a fruit with seeds. Concepts:
Correspondence to the Next Generation Science Standards is indicated in parentheses after each relevant concept. See our conceptual framework for details. - An individual’s fitness (or relative fitness) is the contribution that individual makes to the gene pool of the next generation relative to other individuals in the population.
- An organism’s fitness depends on both its survival and its reproduction.
- Fitness is often measured using proxies like mass, number of matings, and survival because it is difficult to measure reproductive success.
Teacher background: |
