McComas, W.F. 1994. Investigating Evolutionary Biology in the Laboratory.
National Association of Biology Teachers.
This laboratory manual contains some interesting ideas for laboratory exercises.
The audience is primarily advanced secondary students, however, and many
of the exercises would need to be modified a bit to be appropriate for undergraduate
students.
Labs appropriate for undergraduate students:
The birds and the beaks (simulated foraging adaption)
Demonstrating color adaptation in food selection
Simulating natural selection (variation of colored beans in the grass exercise
with students as predators)
Demonstrating natural selection through survival value of cryptic coloration
and apostatic selection
Demonstrating the effects of selection (bean bag genetics)
A model of microevolution in action (an additional student as predator exercise
Phylogentic exercises with pseudo-organisms
- Using alumenothos to introduce evolution and phylogeny
- A simulation model approach to the study of evolution
- The caminalcule family tree
- Modeling modes of evolution: comparing phyletic gradualism and punctuated
equilibrium