EVOLUTIONARY ARM’S RACE VIDEO
Part I
Newts and Snakes
Organism:
What trait did the organism evolve to
survive/reproduce?
Newt
What is the selective pressure on the organism
that caused the change?
Snake
Snakes that are especially resistant to the newt toxin experience a ‘trade-off”, explain:
Infectious Diseases
What have humans used to treat many of these infectious diseases?
What disease is spreading rapidly through the Russian prisons?
Explain why antibiotics are no longer as effective at treating certain strains of tuberculosis? Use the key
points of natural selection. This should be more than one sentence.
Explain how individual TB bacterial are not becoming ‘resistant to antibiotics’, but rather the whole
population of TB bacteria is evolving over time.
What human activities lead to the evolution of resistant strains of bacteria?
EVOLUTIONARY ARMS RACE: SYMBIOSIS CLIP (part II)
What are symbiosis? Describe each of the various types of symbiosis:
Mutualism
Parasitism
Commensalisms
Provide some examples of mutualisms from beginning of the video clip.
The leaf-cutter ________________ are excellent farmers. They gather leaves to grow ________________ in
their gardens. However, their gardens have a pest, ______________ grows in the garden. The way the ants
fight the mold is with a white waxy substance on their bodies, is actually ___________________. The white
waxy organism produces ___________________, which kills the mold. The relationship between the ants,
fungi, and bacteria is a type of symbiosis called ___________________.
Why hasn’t the mold developed antibiotic resistance?
Draw a picture of the relationship between leaf cutter ants, trees, fungi, mold, and bacteria that produce
antibiotics. Describe each of the relationships.
IN YOUR JOURNAL: Pick a single organism from the video and explain how the FIVE principles of
evolution by natural selection apply (as in previous assignment with Jelly Bellicus and peppered moths).