Mississippi Science BIO.4.4
The Standard
- BIO.4
- Students will analyze and interpret evidence to explain the unity and diversity of life.
Design models and/or use simulations to investigate the interaction between changing environments and genetic variation in natural selection leading to adaptations in populations and differential success of populations.
2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Adaptations and Evolution
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Use a model or simulation to test how inherited differences affect survival and reproduction when conditions change. Track how common each trait becomes across generations and compare populations.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students show trait counts across several generations, including before and after a habitat change. They use those counts to explain why one population produced more offspring than another.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think an individual changes its genes because it needs to survive. They may also think a helpful trait appears only after the habitat changes, or that survival alone proves reproductive success.
How to Assess It
- Give students beetle counts before and after a dry season: green beetles drop from 40 to 10, while brown beetles rise from 10 to 40. Ask which inherited trait is becoming more common and what must happen for that change to continue.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Place tan and green paper beetles on grass-colored paper, remove the easiest to spot, copy survivors, then switch to brown paper and recount.
Ask: 'Why did green beetles increase on grass but decrease on bare soil?' Require a claim backed by counts from both rounds.
Run a moth simulation on light and dark backgrounds; record color counts each generation, then predict which color will increase after switching backgrounds.
Give students resistant and susceptible aphid counts from sprayed and unsprayed fields; ask them to predict next season's trait frequencies.
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Printable BIO.4.4 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- L.8.4B.2
Construct written and verbal explanations to describe how genetic variations of traits in a population increase some organisms' probability of surviving and rep...
- FB.5.4
Investigate how biological adaptations and genetic variations of traits in a population enhance the probability of survival in an environment (natural selection...
- GEN.5.5
Enrichment: Analyze computer simulations of the effects of natural selection on allelic frequencies in a population.
- ZOO.1.5
Design models to illustrate the interaction between changing environments and genetic variation in natural selection leading to adaptations in populations and d...
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