Life Cycles, Inheritance & Variation of Traits, and Ecosystems Unit- Students will be able to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles, but all are common to birth, growth, reproduction, and death.  Students will interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variations of these traits exist in a group of similar organisms and that traits can be influenced by the environment. Students will demonstrate an understanding that some animals form groups that help them survive, that organisms survive more easily in some habitats than others, and that environmental changes in an ecosystem may cause the plants and animals living there to change (adapt).