Pacific Northern rattlesnakes prey on California ground squirrels

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In California, Pacific Northern rattlesnakes prey on California ground squirrels. Their relationship is a great example of coevolution. Read the Snake Venom Evolved to Kill Specific Squirrels with Shocking Precision article, then address the following questions:

Explain why the relationship between these two species is considered an example of coevolution.
What did you find most interesting or significant about how the rattlesnake population adapts to the squirrel’s defenses against its venom?
Part 2: Respond to a Peer
Read a post by one of your peers and respond, making sure to extend the conversation by asking questions, offering rich ideas, or sharing personal connections.

Sample Solution

Pacific Northern rattlesnakes pray on California ground squirrels

Coevolution is the process of reciprocal evolutionary change that occurs between pairs of species or among groups of species as they interact with one another. Measuring local adaptation can provide insights into how coevolution occurs between predators and prey. Specifically, theory predicts that local adaptation in functionally matched traits of predators and prey will not be detected when coevolution is governed by escalating arms races, whereas it will be present when coevolution occurs through an alternate mechanism of phenotype matching. Pacific Northern rattlesnakes preying on California ground squirrels is an example of an interaction often described as an arms race. Assays of venom function and squirrel resistance show substantial geographical variation (influenced by site elevation) in both venom metalloproteinase activity and resistance factor effectiveness. The effectiveness of rattlesnake venom overcoming squirrel resistance suggests that phenotype matching plays a role in the coevolution of these molecular traits. Rattlesnakes are evolutionary ahead of their squirrel prey.

Although, Way (2008) pointed out that “Teachers’ instincts often tell them that they should use investigational mathematics more often in their teaching but are sometimes disappointed with the outcomes when they try it.” In my brief teaching experience, I have already faced a number of whole-group scenarios where I completed an activity or explanation and asked “Show of hands who understands this? Keep your hands up if you can convince the class how you would do this” Only to find a couple of children kept their hands up. Possibly, there are two reasons for this : one is that the children are inexperienced in this approach and find it difficult to accept responsibility for the decision-making required and need a lot of practise to develop organised or systematic approaches. The other reason is that the teachers have yet to develop a questioning style that guides, supports and stimulates the children without removing the responsibility for problem-solving process from the children .

On another occasion, a number of student teachers and I had the opportunity to conduct a mathematical problem to two classes of students (one class being in year 8 and on another session, class being in year 7), where each class was split into groups of 6-8 students. Working in pairs, we would spend about 20 minutes with one group and carrousel around to another group to work on the same problem.

During the first session, we introduced The Prime Numbers activity (UCL IOE, 2018, p. 2) – see below, to year 8 students and observed how they responded.

Students noticed the age gap between each child in the example was two years, I then observed some students writing down all the possible ages that the youngest to the oldest could be over the next 20 years. At the time I did not interfere to question whether even numbers are prime numbers. Observing others as they recollected what a prime number is and agreed that only even prime number was two and proceeded to write down only the odd integers whether or not they were prime. I was keen to scaffold the students’ mathematical thinking based on the four main categories

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