Lizards in the Cold

Topic

Resource Type

Level

High School — General High School — AP/IB College

Saved By

10 Users

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.

Estimated Time

Within one 50-minute class period.

Key Terms

Anolis, cold tolerance, error bar, extreme climate event, line graph, lizard, map, polar vortex, scatter plot, standard error of the mean (SEM)

Primary Literature

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.