Lizards in the Cold

Description
This activity guides the analysis of a published scientific figure from a study that investigated how anole lizards may adapt to extremely cold temperatures.
Extreme climate events can drive evolutionary changes in populations. In this study, scientists investigated how winter storms in the southern United States affected local populations of anole lizards. Figure 1 shows the locations of the populations in the study, and Figure 2 (shown above) shows how the cold tolerance of the populations changed over time. Cold tolerance was measured using the critical thermal minimum, the temperature at which the lizards lost their coordination.
The “Educator Materials” document includes captioned figures, background information, figure interpretation, and discussion questions. The “Student Handout” includes captioned figures and background information.
Student Learning Targets
- Analyze and interpret data from a scientific figure.
- Describe how extreme climate events, such as storms, can drive natural selection in populations.
Details
Anolis, cold tolerance, error bar, extreme climate event, line graph, lizard, map, polar vortex, scatter plot, standard error of the mean (SEM)
Campbell-Staton, S. C., Z. A. Cheviron, N. Rochette, J. Catchen, J. B. Losos, and S. V. Edwards. “Winter storms drive rapid phenotypic, regulatory, and genomic shifts in the green anole lizard.” Science 357, 6350 (2017): 495–498. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aam5512.
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Curriculum Connections
HS-LS4-3, HS-LS4-4, HS-LS4-5; SEP2, SEP4, SEP5
EVO-1.E, EVO-1.G, EVO-3.E; SP1, SP4
5.2
II.C
ELA.RST.9–12.7
Math.S-ID.2; MP2, MP5
CC1; DP2, DP3