Lesson Plan: Co-Evolution

1. Have students watch the Ancient Farmers of the Amazon video.

2. Ask students to draw a picture that includes the ants, fungal gardens, mold, and bacteria. Tell them to label their drawings and add arrows to show how the four organisms interact.

3. Discuss with your class how this is an example of the symbiosis of four organisms. Ask:

• What is the relationship between the ants and the fungus? How does this relationship influence the way they evolve?
• What is the relationship between the ants and the mold? What kind of evolution does this initiate? (evolutionary arms race)
• Why was Cameron Currie's discovery of the bacteria on the ants' bodies so amazing? (Ants were using antibiotics long before humans.)

Ask students to think of other examples of species that have coevolved.

4. Divide your class into four groups. Ask each group to visit the Coral Reef Connections interactive and read the introduction and the instructions. Assign each group a relationship: commensalism, mutualism, predator and prey, or competition.

5. Instruct each group to identify all the species that are in the category they are studying and to take notes on how they interrelate. Make sure students visit all four reef zones.

6. Have each group draw a representative member of each species and cut them out. Divide the chalkboard into four segments, one for each reef zone. Then have students come forward, tape their organisms to the board, and draw lines to show the organisms' connection to members of other species. Tell them to describe the relationships, briefly, to their classmates. (Note: Some species fall into more than one category.)

7. Choose some organisms at random and ask students to name the other species that influence each organism's evolution. Then ask students to describe the types of relationships each organism has with the other species and how students expect the organism to evolve.

8. Have students view the Toxic Newts video and read the backgrounder. Discuss the following questions with your class:

• Why has the newt developed a level of toxicity much higher than that necessary to kill most predators?
• What is the selective pressure on the newt?
• What is the trade-off for the snake in developing greater resistance to toxicity?

9. Have students view the video titled Evolving Ideas: Why Does Evolution Matter Now?. Discuss in class the following questions:

• How do humans influence the evolution of microbes?
• How does natural selection work to produce multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis?
• Why is understanding evolution especially important today, now that people can travel easily?

10. Ask the students to apply what they have learned about antibiotic resistance in the Microbe Clock interactive and the Evolving Ideas: Why Does Evolution Matter Now? video to the recent anthrax attacks. Have them conduct research on the Web and in newspapers and magazines to learn more about anthrax. (They can visit the NOVA Web site at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bioterror/ .) Then have them write a short paper giving their opinion about how the government should handle bioterrorism threats. Students should use the following questions to guide their research:

• Why is it important to make sure patients take the full course of antibiotics prescribed to them?
• Why shouldn't everyone take Cipro as a preventive measure?
• How long does it take to develop an antibiotic? How long do bacteria take to become resistant?
• How does the anthrax vaccine work?

11. Students who want to learn more about coevolution may wish to read an excerpt from Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Have them list examples Darwin gives of commensalism, mutualism, predator and prey, or competition.