Transitioning from Climate Change to Evolution

Today we didn't have lab, so we used our long block to dive into evolution.  In order to transition from climate change to evolution, we used data from Stirling and Parkinson (2006), showing decreasing lone female polar bear body mass over time.

http://tinyurl.com/9llchun

Examining this graph also gave us the opportunity to revisit independent and dependent variables as well as start to talk about expressing variation in data.  We tried to come up with the causes for the decrease in weight over the years (as we learned later in class, the environment can play a big role in determining if a trait is beneficial for an individual).

Before we could dive into learning about evolution, we needed to clarify the terms evolution and theory.  These words have a very different meaning in science, than they do in other disciplines. 

We watched the videos below.

To see variation in a population for ourselves, we visited the finches and made observations about the variation that we saw.

Homework:  Read the article "Attack of the Mutant Crickets!" and answer the questions on page 6.