EVOLUTION VIDEO QUESTIONS
Name _______________________
The Evolutionary Arms Race
BEFORE YOU WATCH:
1. What does the term “arms race” mean? This term was used a lot in reference to the cold war. Your parents
can help you with this!
2. Explain an example of evolution through natural selection where the pressure causing selection is weather or
another abiotic (non-living factor)
WATCH THIS VIDEO – up to 22:20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zsWdW7eJ1M
WHILE YOU WATCH
1. Explain how the garter snake and rough-skinned newt have evolved simultaneously over many generations
and what the “trade-off” is for each organism. In other words, what are the benefits and costs to each
organism of this co-evolution process?
2. What do we mean by an evolutionary “arms race”?
3. What is happening to tuberculosis bacteria in Russia (and now throughout the world) and WHY has this
happened? How is this an example of the evolutionary “arms race”?
4. What could be done to stop or slow the “arms race” with bacteria?
Why sex?
WATCH THIS VIDEO – up to 25:20
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miiRmrZX3XM
WHILE YOU WATCH
1. In evolutionary terms, why is “sex more important than life itself”?
2. Explain the unique strategy of these particular salamanders and the benefits of this strategy to the females.
3. What is the benefit of sex for the minnows? Why are there also asexual minnows?
4. Why did peacock tails and other “gendered” traits pose such a problem for Darwin?
5. How do the peacock experiments described provide support for the idea of sexual selection? A complete
answer will be at least three sentences long.
6. “Sexual dimorphism” is a where males and females of the same species are noticeably different from one
another, in their “secondary sex characteristics (ways other than their actual reproductive organs). Why does
sexual selection result in sexual dimorphism?