Lab Week 9

This week we discussed evolution and natural selection. We talked about how mutations influence natural selection by differentiation of traits and demonstrated this with a bean prey activity, where we had different "traits" (utensils) to gather prey (beans) to see which traits allowed us to survive. 

The most clear part of this activity was that certain traits may allow organisms to survive over others, and some may cause an organism to die off, which leads to certain traits becoming less prominent. One unclear part was trying to record the percentages in our table. It was confusing to me what values we were supposed to record and what the showed from our simulation, even though I knew we were trying to evaluate the cause and effect between the type of utensil and the number of beans collected. 

One question I have is, would it be more influential to do this activity with a baseline of beans required to survive rather than "killing off" the person with the least amount of beans? For example, if an animal needs 50kg of food (or maybe 50 beans), the goal could be to get that number of beans to survive rather than just getting more than your table-mates. This would show a more realistic example of how animals survive or die off in the wild. 




Comments

  1. BrookeMarch 22, 2023 at 8:02 AM

    Hi Brenna, I love your idea on how to change this activity to become more realistic. I think that would be a great way to teach a deeper understanding about cause and effect.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sam SchroderMarch 22, 2023 at 8:31 AM

    Hi Brenna!
    I like how you came up with the idea of doing a threshold rather than whoever had the least. This reminded me of the predator activity we did in lecture the other week. I think that idea would be more beneficial for older students.
    Good Job!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Meredith BourgeousMarch 22, 2023 at 9:15 AM

    Hi Brenna, I agree that it was clear that the traits that survived were able to get the most beans (prey). I wonder if this would also be clear for students also doing this activity. I like the adaptation you put on it by mixing it with the panther game we played in class a couple weeks ago.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Taylor HospodarskyMarch 22, 2023 at 11:18 AM

    Hi Brenna! I also thought it was a little unclear as to how to calculate the percentages during the simulation activity. Eventually, I was able to connect the results from the activity into the questions that were being asked.

    ReplyDelete

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