Mississippi Science L.3.4

Standard Cluster

Students will demonstrate an understanding of how adaptations allow animals to satisfy life needs and respond both physically and behaviorally to their environment. Obtain data from informational text to explain how changes in habitats (both those that occur naturally and those caused by organisms) can be beneficial or harmful to the organisms that live there. Ask questions to predict how natural or human-caused changes in a habitat cause plants and animals to respond in different ways, including hibernating, migrating, responding to light, death, or extinction (e.g., sea turtles, the dodo bird, or nocturnal species). Analyze and interpret data to explain how variations in characteristics among organisms of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing (e.g., plants with larger thorns being less likely to be eaten by predators or animals with better camouflage colorations being more likely to survive and bear offspring). Define and improve a solution to a problem created by environmental changes and any resulting impacts on the types of density and distribution of plant and animal populations living in the environment (e.g., replanting sea oats in coastal areas or developing or preserving wildlife corridors and green belts). Use an engineering design process to define the problem, design, construct, evaluate, and improve the environment. * Construct scientific arguments using evidence from fossils of plants and animals that lived long ago to infer the characteristics of early environments (e.g., marine fossils on dry land, tropical plant fossils in arctic areas, or fossils of extinct organisms in any environment).

2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Adaptation and Diversity