Students will study and interpret data about changing snail populations using ideas about natural selection and make predictions about how populations might change in the future.
Students use grains of rice to models small organisms and students acts as predators selecting food during limited time spans. Over a number of generations, the proportion of grains of rice of each color in each population will change if the students select one color in preference to another. This is a simple model for natural selection resulting from predation.
Students will view videos of animal actions and behaviors and consider these actions in terms of their consequences for the animal, such as its well-being, survival and reproductive success, and also in terms of how they come to happen - are they instinctive and automatic actions or learned and deliberate? Students will also complete an observation of a real animal.