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Overview: Find out how we investigate evolutionary adaptations by following two scientists and their team as they figure out how the willow leaf beetle survives in different climates.Author/Source: UC Museum of Paleontology Grade level: 13-16 Time: 30 minutes Teaching tips: This research profile comes with a student reading guide, as well as a set of discussion questions. Concepts: Correspondence to the Next Generation Science Standards is indicated in parentheses after each relevant concept. See our conceptual framework for details. - Evolution results from natural selection acting upon genetic variation within a population.
- Natural selection and genetic drift act on the variation that exists in a population.
- Natural selection acts on phenotype as an expression of genotype.
- Phenotype is a product of both genotype and the organism’s interactions with the environment.
- Inherited characteristics affect the likelihood of an organism's survival and reproduction.
- Over time, the proportion of individuals with advantageous characteristics may increase (and the proportion with disadvantageous characteristics may decrease) due to their likelihood of surviving and reproducing.
- Traits that confer an advantage may persist in the population and are called adaptations.
- 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.
- Scientific knowledge is open to question and revision as we come up with new ideas and discover new evidence.
- A hallmark of science is exposing ideas to testing.
- Scientists test their ideas using multiple lines of evidence.
- Scientists use multiple research methods (experiments, observational research, comparative research, and modeling) to collect data.
- Scientists may explore many different hypotheses to explain their observations.
- Science is a human endeavor.
- As with other scientific disciplines, evolutionary biology has applications that factor into everyday life, for example in agriculture, biodiversity and conservation biology, and medicine and health.
- Scientists use experimental evidence to study evolutionary processes.
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