Understanding Evolution

Your one-stop source for information on evolution

Understanding Evolution

Teaching Resources

Home → Teach Evolution → Lessons and Teaching Tools → Teaching Resources Database → Evo in the news: Speciation in real time

Evo in the news: Speciation in real time

Grade Level(s):

  • 9-12
  • 13-16
  • General

Source:

  • UC Museum of Paleontology

Resource type:

  • Evo in the News article

Time: 30 minutes

Overview

We often think of speciation as a slow process, so slow that we can't really observe it going on around us. This news brief from Febrary 2010 describes two examples which demonstrate that, at least occasionally, important steps toward speciation can be observed in less than 50 years.

Go to this resource »

  • [Mechanisms of evolution: Grades 9-12] Speciation is the splitting of one ancestral lineage into two or more descendant lineages.
  • [Mechanisms of evolution: Grades 9-12] Speciation requires reproductive isolation.
  • [Mechanisms of evolution: Grades 9-12] Occupying new environments can provide new selection pressures and new opportunities, leading to speciation. (LS4.C)
  • [Mechanisms of evolution: Grades 13-16] Speciation is the splitting of one ancestral lineage into two or more descendant lineages.
  • [Mechanisms of evolution: Grades 13-16] Speciation requires reproductive isolation.
  • [Mechanisms of evolution: Grades 13-16] Occupying new environments can provide new selection pressures and new opportunities, leading to speciation.
  • Disciplinary Core Idea LS4.C: Adaptation

This article includes a set of discussion and extension questions for use in class, as well as a video podcast. It also includes hints about related lessons that might be used in conjunction with this one. Get more tips for using Evo in the News articles in your classroom.