The Effects of Temperature on Caterpillar Growth Rate

This lesson and activity uses biological data on the response of organisms to temperature change to illustrate the mathematical concepts of rates of change, exponential growth, and logarithms. The first lesson includes a brief lecture (with accompanying PowerPoint) that introduces students to core biology and math concepts, and a worksheet where students answer questions and practice simple calculations. In the second part of the lesson, students learn about rapid environmental change in the Arctic and speculate how insects may respond to increasing temperature. Using a dataset on Arctic caterpillar growth rates, students will complete an activity in Microsoft Excel graphing exponential and logarithmic functions, and calculating Relative growth rate (RGR) and Doubling time (DT).

Taught by: Melissa DeSiervo

Objectives

Through this lesson, students will:

• learn to plot biological data

• use simple mathematical models to describe the biological data

• interpret exponential models

• use Microsoft Excel

• understand the relevance of math to describe how Arctic systems are changing

Lesson Components

Lesson Plan

Google Slide Show - Climate Caterpillar Growth

Google Slide Show - Exponential Growth

Recorded Lecture (YouTube)

Files