Thursday, February 27, 2020

Natural Selection with Butterflies



One of the first labs I do with AP Bio in our Natural Selection unit, is this butterfly lab from Kim Foglia. I just converted her lab to a google doc and also have a google sheet linked to it where my students record their data. I like for them to be able to see everyone's data and to be able to compare.



The first year I did this lab, I collected some squares of cardboard and glued different fabrics on each. I think all but one of the fabrics were fat quarters. Then I used a standard hole punch to punch out 5 different colors of "butterflies." It was a little painful punching that many holes the first year, but I've gotten several years of use out of them since, so I guess it was worth it. For each of the fabrics, there is at least one color of "butterfly" that blends in incredibly well. Each environment will see a shift in the frequencies of different colors of butterflies, but it'll be different color shifts.



The students have enjoyed it each time we've done this lab and it gives a good picture of what is going on with natural selection.



Here is the link to the lab as a google doc. And here is the link to the google sheet I made for data collection. There are also links to this in the lab itself. Generally, I only print the last 4 pages of the lab for students and have them access the first three pages electronically through Google Classroom.


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