Storytelling can stimulate learning by delivering scientific content within a narrative that increases comprehension and engagement. In this article I describe the coevolutionary arms race between toxic newts and predatory garter snakes. This engaging story centers on the use of a deadly neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin (TTX) as an antipredator…

Case studies are valuable tools for instruction but are often limited to a single topic and a single class period. Courses such as evolution that synthesize multiple concepts around a common theme, however, can use a single case study type project that extends over the entire semester to develop and link core concepts. A central theme in…

Plant awareness disparity (PAD, formerly plant blindness) is the tendency not to notice plants in one's environment, which leads to the perspective that plants are unimportant. In this paper, we explore how plants and animals are represented in introductory biology textbooks to determine if these texts are contributing to PAD in undergraduate…

There is an emphasis on survival-based selection in biology education that can allow students to neglect other important evolutionary components, such as sexual selection, reproduction, and inheritance. Student understanding of the role of reproduction in evolution is as important as student understanding of the role of survival. Limiting…

We present a drawing discovery lab that crosscuts multiple disciplines in biology and links concepts in genetics and evolutionary thinking to enhance understanding of the genotype-to-phenotype transformation. These combined concepts are also linked to ecological frameworks in nature through the model of biological plasticity. Students and teachers…

Naturalists enrich our scientific understanding of biodiversity. However, just as countries have fallen behind on commitments to provide biodiversity conservation funding, so has the focus of life science stayed arm's length. The purpose of this article is to consider why biodiversity should be the center of life sciences education and how…

Given the importance of phylogenetic trees to understanding common ancestry and evolution, they are a necessary part of the undergraduate biology curriculum. However, a number of common misconceptions, such as reading across branch tips and understanding homoplasy, can pose difficulties in student understanding. Students also may take phylogenetic…

This article provides two activities, exploring genetic drift of small breeding populations, highlighting the black-footed ferret ("Mustela nigripes"). According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, all black-footed ferrets are descended from 18 individuals, making them extremely vulnerable to genetic drift. They were thought to be…

Many students have very robust misconceptions about natural selection, stemming from intuitive theories that form a child's earliest understandings of the natural world. For example, students often imagine that species evolve in response to environmental pressures that cause a need for change and that all individuals in the population…

The evolutionarily conserved Elongator Complex associates with RNA polymerase II for transcriptional elongation. Elp3 is the catalytic subunit, contains histone acetyltransferase activity, and is associated with neurodegeneration in humans. Elp1 is a scaffolding subunit and when mutated causes familial dysautonomia. Here, we show that…

In this article, we present how educational resources for zoology designed by undergraduate students help to propose means of action for teaching diversity and animal evolution in basic education. We realised that activities of creation and analysis of educational resources, in the context of didactic planning, have the potential to approximate…

A classroom exercise is described in which college students take part in creating and supporting an evolutionary hypothesis that explains effort grunting. The exercise holds their interest throughout and readies them to understand hypotheses of animal and plant evolution. It informs them about the dependence of cultural evolution upon biological…

A lesson plan on the phylum Tardigrada is presented in a storytelling workbook that introduces the evolutionary concepts of adaptive radiation, speciation, divergence, and "tree-thinking" through narrative, transitional art, contemplative coloring, and data searches, which can be enhanced with microscopy wet labs. Students gain insight…

Despite scientific evidence suggesting close phylogenetic relationship between chimpanzees and humans, the inclusion of these apes in the genus "Homo" is controversial. Several tools have been used to analyse this issue such as fossils, molecular clock and genome. This work intended to understand the biology teachers' conceptions about…

This practical lesson describes how students in six eighth grade science classes participated in a lesson combining the National Core Arts Standards with the Next Generation Science Standards. The goal of the lesson was to provide visual representations of finch beak form and function so students could better understand genetic variation and how…