Unpacked Content
Scientific and Engineering Practices
Engaging in Argument from Evidence
Crosscutting Concepts
Cause and Effect
Knowledge
Students know:
- As species grow in number, competition for limited resources can arise.
- Individuals in a species have genetic variation (through mutations and sexual reproduction) that is passed on to their offspring.
- Genetic variation can lead to variation of expressed traits in individuals in a population.
- Individuals can have specific traits that give them a competitive advantage relative to other individuals in the species.
- Individuals that survive and reproduce at a higher rate will provide their specific genetic variations to a greater proportion of individuals in the next generation.
- Over many generations, groups of individuals with particular traits that enable them to survive and reproduce in distinct environments using distinct resources can evolve into a different species.
- Natural selection is a process while biological evolution can result from that process.
Skills
Students are able to:
- Identify examples of adaptations among various organisms that increase fitness—camouflage, mimicry, drought tolerance, defensive coloration, beak adaptations.
- Use reasoning to connect the evidence to construct an argument.
- Interpret data.
- Defend a position.
- Use evidence to correlate claims about cause and effect.
Understanding
Students understand that:
- Natural selection occurs only if there is both variation in the genetic information between organisms in a population and variation in the expression of that genetic information (trait variation) that leads to differences in performance among individuals.
- Evolution is the consequence of the interaction of four factors:
- The potential for a species to increase in number.
- The genetic variation of individuals in a species due to mutation and sexual reproduction.
- Competition for an environment's limited supply of the resources that individuals need in order to survive and reproduce.
- The ensuing proliferation of those organisms that are better able to survive and reproduce in the environment.
Vocabulary
- Variation
- Adaptation
- Fitness
- Biodiversity
- Habitat
- Ecosystems
- Diversity
- Population
- Population density
- Limiting factors
- Carrying capacity
- Genetic mutation
- Competition
- Natural selection
- Genetic recombination
