Analyzing Data on Tuskless Elephants

Topic

Resource Type

Level

High School — General High School — AP/IB College

Used In

1 BioInteractive Playlists

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Description

This data-driven activity accompanies the video Selection for Tuskless Elephants. It engages students in analyzing data to make evidence-based claims about the occurrence of tusklessness in elephant populations.

By watching segments of this video, students will follow the analyses and discoveries of Joyce Poole, a scientist who has studied elephants for many years. Students will then analyze data to investigate the impact of human activity, namely poaching, on elephant populations.

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Student Learning Targets

Analyze quantitative data in order to make predictions based on evidence.
Use evidence-based predictions to explain how a population changes over time due to human impacts.
Explain how the selective pressures on a population may impact the frequencies of phenotypes.
Propose a claim supported by scientific evidence to answer a research question.
Determine whether scientific results confirm or contradict a hypothesis.
Provide evidence-based reasoning that uses available data to support a scientific claim.

Estimated Time

One to two 50-minute class periods.

Key Terms

adaptation, claim, evidence, frequency, phenotype, poaching, population, reasoning, selection, selective pressure, variation

Terms of Use

The resource is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. No rights are granted to use HHMI’s or BioInteractive’s names or logos independent from this Resource or in any derivative works.