Evolution of Sexual Reproduction: Construct a Species

By Beth Acton, John Abbott College

At a Glance

Discipline

  • STEM
  • Biology

Instructional Level

  • College & CEGEP

Course

  • Biology of Sexuality

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

  • Individual
  • Group
  • Whole Class

Type of Tasks

  • Analyzing
  • Discussing
  • Creating & designing

Technical Details

Class size

  • Small (20-49)

Time

  • Single class period (< 90 mins)

Inclusivity & Accessibility

  • Diversity of engagement
  • Variety of action & expression

Instructional Purpose

  • Consolidation & metacognition

Overview

In this activity, students review evolutionary principles, gaining insights into how various traits influence the characteristics and behavior of a species.

By constructing a fictional animal species, primarily focused on traits related to sexual reproduction, students explore the complex interplay between these traits. They must specify whether each trait evolved through natural selection, sexual selection, or social selection.

Additionally, students analyze each trait by explaining both its advantages and disadvantages. Importantly, students are tasked with ensuring the coherence of their selections, aiming for an integration of traits that collectively form a functional organism with characteristics and behaviours favourable to survival and reproductive fitness.

This activity is ideally used to integrate evolutionary mechanisms and concepts at the end of a unit. The activity can be done completed as a group of individually, where students then present and discuss the decisions they made to construct their fictional species.

Instructional Objectives

Students will be able to

  • Describe and provide examples of natural selection, sexual selection and social selection.
  • Explain advantages and disadvantages of selected traits and behaviours.
  • Analyze whether selected traits and behaviours are evolutionarily compatible in the same species.

Workflow & Materials

Workflow

Activity Workflow

View on CourseFlow
Document

Construct a Species Worksheet

Beth Acton

Contributor's Notes

Benefits
Challenges
Tips
Benefits
  • Students are tasked with consolidating and integrating several evolutionary concepts together as they construct their species.
  • Students benefit from discussing each other’s species, traits and behaviours, presenting each other with different perspectives and reasons for the choices they made.
  • Creativity is sometimes absent from scientific disciplines, so this activity opens an avenue for creative exploration for students, many of whom enjoy this activity and produce some excellent renderings and names for their fictional species.
Challenges
  • Students typically have a strong understanding of evolutionary mechanisms and selective pressures, but can struggle to integrate these concepts across different traits for their species, and may select traits that are incompatible. These incompatibilities present good points for discussion and consolidation of learning.
  • This is a fun activity, and some students may get a little carried away creating very exaggerated traits or behaviours. There may be some need for the instructor to keep individuals on track during species construction and species presentation.
  • Students may be nervous about the drawing component of the exercise, so I always reassure them that their artistic skills are not being evaluated, they just need to put in some effort to display their chosen traits. Other students will be so engaged with the drawing that they will need some direction to more efficiently manage their time.
Tips
  • Students sharing their species with each other enriches the learning from this activity. This peer-to-peer sharing can be accomplished through different strategies, including a gallery walk, small group discussions or mini-oral presentation. Students can optionally peer assess each other`s species.
  • The worksheet can stand-alone as an end-of-unit assignment that students individually complete, without the in-class time dedicated to the activity. This reduces the richness of the learning, but students will still benefit from the activity if completed individually.
  • It could then be interesting to see if there could be any interspecies mating between the constructed species within the class. This has been a discussion point at the end of the activity, but it could be interesting as an extension of the activity; students create an online-dating profile for their species, creating profiles for both the male and female members of their species; they find the ‘ideal match’ for interspecies reproduction from the dating pool; students select and predict the traits of the resultant offspring and the hybrid species.

Applied Strategies

Gallery Walk

Artifact creation, peer review and refinement