Material Detail

Survival of the Fittest: Battling Beetles

This guided inquiry three-part activity engages learners in thinking about the mechanism of natural selection through data collection and pattern recognition. In this scenario, learners use M&Ms and other simple materials to investigate the mating habits of beetles and whether genetic variations give male beetles advantages against weaker beetles. Learners will collect and calculate data to draw conclusions. The third part of this activity...

Keywords:: Social Sciences, Mutations, Problem Solving, History/Policy/Law, Evidence for Evolution, NSDL, Reasoning and Proof, Ecology, Survival, Physics, Number and Operations, History of Life, General, Earth System Science, Heredity and Genetics, Science and Society, Asking Questions, Variation, Variables and Expressions, Life Science, Populations, Equations and Inequalities, Communicating Results, Mathematics, Anthropology, Mating, Classification, Candy, Rate, Patterns of Heredity, Education, Algebra, Patterns, Mechanisms of Evolution, Biological Science, Probability, Representation, Animals, Conducting Investigations, Health/Medicine, Data Representation, Data Analysis, Forestry and Agriculture, Beetles, Inheritance, Geoscience, Animal Behavior, Data Collection, Biodiversity, Darwin, Gathering Data, The Scientific Process, General Science, Hardy-Weinberg, Evolution, Natural Selection, Genotypes, Formulating Explanations