March 19-20

Bird Beak Adaptations Lab & Mutation Nation 🦜🔬

📅 Notes Completed: Week of March 11
📅 Lab Completed: March 19–20

Over the past week, students explored how mutations can lead to adaptations and how natural selection shapes populations over time. After completing their Mutation Nation notes, students participated in the Bird Beak Adaptations Lab, where they modeled how different beak types are better suited to specific food sources.

🧬 Mutation Nation Notes Recap:

• A mutation is a permanent change in DNA. Mutations can be good, bad, or neutral, depending on the environment.

• Some beneficial mutations become adaptations that help organisms survive and reproduce.

• Examples of adaptations from nature include a zebra’s stripes for camouflage or a duck’s webbed feet for swimming.

• Students also learned about Charles Darwin, who studied finches on the Galápagos Islands and developed the theory of natural selection—organisms with traits best suited to their environment are more likely to survive and pass on those traits to their offspring.

🦜 Bird Beak Adaptations Lab Summary:

Objective: To test how different bird beak types are suited to specific food sources.

What We Did:

• Students used different tools (spoons, tweezers, clothespins, chopsticks) to represent various beak types.

• Each “beak” was used to pick up different “foods” (beans, rice, rubber bands, toothpicks) in timed trials.

• Students recorded how many items were successfully collected with each beak and food type combination.

Key Discoveries:

• Some beak types were better adapted for specific food sources, just like in nature.

• The shape of a bird’s beak affects what it can eat, and birds with the most effective beak shape for the available food are more likely to survive.

• This lab demonstrated natural selection, where traits that offer a survival advantage become more common over generations.

🌍 Why This Matters:

This activity connected mutation, adaptation, and natural selection in a hands-on way. It showed how environmental changes and available resources drive evolution, just like Darwin observed in his studies of finches.

✅ Great job using real-world models to explore evolution in action! Keep thinking about how traits help organisms survive in their unique environments. 🧬🌱