This resource highlights the need for humans to preserve natural habitats and the genetic diversity of wild populations in order to help plants and animals cope with climate change.
Students will learn about several species that are already adapting to their changing climate but not all species have the space, time, or genetic diversity to evolve.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This video includes engaging graphics that help bring life to the topics presented.
This resource highlights specific populations of species that are evolving to adapt, which helps make these concepts easier to comprehend.
Additional Prerequisites
It may benefit students to have some background knowledge about evolution before beginning this video.
Students may need a free account in order to access some features of this resource.
This video includes two brief ads.
Differentiation
Biology classes could use this resource while further discussing evolution and also why genetic diversity continues to be such an important topic for biologists.
Students could work in groups to research additional species that have undergone adaptive evolution.
After learning that not all species have the "evolutionary arsenal" to deal with climate change, students could do projects offering solutions that will benefit those species.
Students could also view this LabXchange video to learn about biogeography and about how biodiversity occurs.
To connect this lesson with ethics and social studies classes for high school students, consider having them read this article about the loss of wild species, watch this video about natural climate solutions and then this video about the Anthropocene. Students can then write a reflection paper.
This podcast also addresses animals' abilities to evolve in order to address climate change.
Scientist Notes
The video critically illustrates biodiversity conservation and the need to improve efforts for our flora and fauna to adapt to climate change. This is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-5 Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.
HS-LS2-7 Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity.
LS3: Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits
3-LS3-2 Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.
LS4: Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
MS-LS4-6 Use mathematical representations to support explanations of how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases of specific traits in populations over time.
3-LS4-2 Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing.
HS-LS4-5 Evaluate the evidence supporting claims that changes in environmental conditions may result in: (1) increases in the number of individuals of some species, (2) the emergence of new species over time, and (3) the extinction of other species.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.7.2 Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.4.3 Identify the reasons and evidence a speaker provides to support particular points.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.3 Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence.
