Understanding Biodiversity presents an overview of biodiversity, its importance and relevance to humans, all living things, and the Earth. It includes species pages and a template to engage and involve students in real-life data collection.

This list of conceptual understandings regarding evolution are aligned across grade levels to help instructors identify age-appropriate learning goals for their students and understand how concepts taught at one grade level lay the groundwork for more sophisticated concepts later on. The Framework is divided into five strands: History of life; Evidence of evolution; Mechanisms of evolution; Nature of science; and Studying evolution

This resource has been prepared for one semester of an introductory-level college biology course with foundational themes of evolution, ecology, and comparative body systems. The first unit explores the origins and defining characteristics of living things and compares the earliest and simplest life forms with more complex cellular life. One of the common features of all life is that it requires energy; the next section explores the why and how of energy acquisition and relationships between the metabolic pathways. After a primer on photosynthesis and energy production via respiration, the next few sections delve into the form and physiology of plants and animals, focusing on water and food transport in plants, and in the respiratory, circulatory, digestive and reproductive systems of diverse animals. These systems were selected to serve as an introduction to animal physiology because they can be easily interleaved with other core course concepts such as energy flow and nutrient cycling through ecosystems, population genetics, bioenergetics, or speciation. The final sections of the text provide a basis for understanding evolutionary change, biodiversity, and the history and relatedness of life on Earth.

Understanding Organisms is an adapted textbook remixed from a variety of openly licensed sources, with additional content introduced by the author. Throughout the chapters, embedded media and special content boxes linking a diverse collection of web-based resources (e.g., popular science articles, podcasts, interactive tutorials, simulations, etc.) promote engagement and independent learning. Many of these highlight the work of biologists from diverse backgrounds or make connections between the biology content and real-world concerns. Chapter content was adapted to improve accuracy and inclusivity in topics such as sexual reproduction, sex determination, and sexual selection. Each section includes interactive H5P content in the form of no-stakes practice activities with instant feedback that allows students to self-check their understanding while engaging with the text.

This lesson plan has students working in small groups to research the Mountain Pine Beetle in Colorado and other inter-mountain Western states. Students identify the factors that control pine beetle population and research how warmer winters and decreasing spring snowpack allow the population of pine beetles to expand.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Plant diversity is quickly dwindling across the world. That’s put our planet’s pollinators in danger. Pollen contains a variety of nutritional elements that are key to life itself. Not only are global changes affecting pollen amounts, they’re also affecting pollen varieties. This means that many pollinators, including bees, aren’t eating the best-balanced diet they need to survive. Understanding how the elemental ingredients in pollen affect different traits in bees, such as their survival, body mass, and ability to protect themselves, could help scientists determine whether and how the scarcity of specific nutrients affects them. And it could lead to new ways of conserving pollinators and the critical roles they play in many ecosystems. For their part, researchers from Jagiellonian University in Poland examined the effects of an inadequate supply of potassium, sodium, and zinc in pollen on _Osmia bicornis_, the red mason bee..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This laboratory manual is intended for use in a biology laboratory course taken by non-science majors, pre-biology, and pre-allied health majors.

Laboratory exercises provide students with experience in basic laboratory skills, gathering and organizing data, measuring and calculating, hypothesis testing, analysis of data, writing, and laboratory safety. The skill sets are designed to promote the development of critical thought and analysis. Students work with living and preserved specimens, and laboratory reagents and equipment.

This lab-based course covers the foundational principles of modern life science as outlined in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). It also includes approximately a third of the Earth and Space Science standards, primarily those connected to environmental science and ecology. The course emphasizes all three dimensions of the NGSS, with special attention to the crosscutting concepts of Patterns and Energy and Matter. Additionally, scientific inquiry and engineering design practices are emphasized throughout the course. The course is designed to follow a chemistry course and so builds on student understandings of molecules as they explore the biomolecular underpinnings of life's functions, the evolution of life, and the interactions of life in ecosystems. Technological, historical, political, and environmental aspects of biology will also be addressed. Critical thinking, data analysis, and argumentation from evidence are also emphasized.

In this seminar you will create a mental organization scheme to learn the central dogma theory in the steps of synthesizing proteins. Interactive games will help reinforce the process. You will model the process by creating coded (transcribing) secret messages and translating messages.StandardsBIO.B.2.2.1 Describe how the processes of transcription and translation are similar in all organisms.BIO.B.2.2.2 Describe the role of ribosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, and the nucleus in the production of specific types of proteins.BIO.B.2.3.1 Describe how genetic mutations alter the DNA sequence and may or may not affect phenotype (e.g., silent, nonsense, frame-shift).

In this lab exercise, students of intermediate-level French will watch a short video on brain plasticity from the universcience VOD collection online.

A variety of symbiotic relationships exist between sharks and other marine species in this segment from Nature.

it would be ideal if students already have learned that DNA is the genetic material, and that DNA is made up of As, Ts, Gs, and Cs. It also would help if students already know that each human has two versions of every piece of DNA in their genome, one from mom and one from dad. The lesson will take about one class period, with roughly 30 minutes of footage and 30 minutes of activities.

In this EarthLabs activity, learners explore the concepts of coral bleaching, bleaching hot spots and degree-heating weeks. Using data products from NOAA's Coral Reef Watch, students identify bleaching hot spots and degree-heating weeks around the globe as well as in the Florida Keys' Sombrero Reef to determine the impact higher-than-normal sea surface temperatures have on coral reefs.

Using a literature review and primary sources that were part of the review, students examine data to evaluate if this data can predict future life choices. Students will learn content in Math, Biology and Language Arts during this literacy-based lesson that supports students in using textual evidence to develop and support claims.

This activity is a teacher-guided inquiry activity of the sorting or grouping of Minnesota critters according to student driven criteria or purpose of their groupings. Teacher/student questions and discussion should be encouraged after this activity to emphasize that awareness of the criteria or purpose of certain groupings may be important before beginning an investigation.

Insects are an excellent resource for science education. Many insects are easily maintained in the classroom and can happily thrive despite being handled and kept in captivity. The remarkable diversity in form and function of commonly found insects promotes interest and enthusiasm in observing the natural world. Insects can also be used to model a variety of scientific principles.

The objectives of this page are to give educators basic information about insects and ideas on how to use insects in the classroom.

Learning Assistants are used to facilitate student discussion in peer instruction during clicker questions (i.e., classroom response systems), by asking Socratic questions, emphasizing reasoning, and probing student thinking.

This problem set will help teach students how to describe real world distributions. Data science skills that will be covered include measures of central tendency and spread, transformations of distributions, exploratory statistics and scripted data analysis. This problem set also helps students explore metrics of biodiversity and interact with datasets that are not their own.

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