Survival of the sneakiest natural selection lesson

students read the comic and use it as an example of natural seleciton

1. According to this cartoon, who is most “fit” in the video game world?

2. Survival of the fittest Content Objective: Students will identify and explain “fitness” as it pertains to Natural Selection by reading the comic “Survival of the Sneakiest”.   Reading Strategy Objective: Students will draw inferences from the text to decipher what characteristics make an organism more or less “fit”.

3. Who is more fit here? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbtaErurX1c

4. So what happened here? Was the biggest, strongest animal victorious? So what is the definition of “fitness” then if it is not the biggest and strongest?

5. What conditions are necessary for natural selection to occur? 1. Traits must be able to be passed from parents to offspring

6. Natural hair color Dyed hair color Can Brittany pass on her blonde hair color to her kids?

7. What conditions are necessary for natural selection to occur? 2. Variation must be present in a population

8. What conditions are necessary for natural selection to occur? 3. Fitness to the environment What do you think “survival of the fittest” means? What kinds of organisms survive?

9. Survival of the…sneakiest? Read comic Together, as a class And on our own Fill in the E box (summary) and the A box (quotes) as we go

10. Discussion questions to think about while reading: When it comes to crickets, what does fitness mean?
 Is calling good or bad for a cricket's fitness?
 Give some examples of natural selection at work in this cricket story.
 How does selection favor calling? How does selection favor not calling?

11. So what does it mean to be “fit” Can being the biggest and strongest help you survive long enough to pass on your genes? Can being small and fast help you survive to pass on your genes? How about having some kind of camouflage to blend into your background? Any characteristic that increases an organism’s fitness is called an adaptation.

12. Extension Create your own comic strip with at least 3 panels about an example of natural selection and fitness. Show how the traits your organism has ( being very small, clever, fast, camouflage, good eyesight, or anything else you can think of ) help it survive, while individuals without these traits do not survive. Include descriptions or dialogue to explain what is happening in the pictures