New Zika virus lineages show increased fitness
#ZikaVirus
#Zika
#PLOS
#NeglectedTropicalDiseases
#PhenitypicAdaptation
#Mosquito
#Mosquitos
#Mozzies
#Clades
#Mutations
#ZikaEpidemic https://www.news-medical.net/news/20230209/New-Zika-virus-lineages-show-increased-fitness.aspx
>The current study, published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, aimed to explore the possible phenotypic adaptation of the Zika virus to increase its transmissibility and virulence in the Americas.

I got the opportunity to design my own High School curriculum on #Evolution; sharing it with you here

* Abiogenesis & spontaneous generation – the first (incorrect) ideas about this

* religious teachings about Creation

* #Abiogenesis – modern discoveries, scientific ideas

* Charles Darwin’s Voyage of Discovery

* Darwin’s finches

* Fossils: Evidence of evolution over time. Dating of #fossils

* Convergent evolution

* Homologous and analogous structures

* Natural selection

* Artificial selection

* clades & phylogenies

* Gradualism vs. Punctuated Equilibrium

* Is evolution a theory or a fact?

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Examples of evolution
_________________________
* Chicken or the egg came first?! Seriously?

* Evolution of the dinosaurs

* Evolution of our kidneys

* Classifying groups of humans: #races, #clades, #populations (using words carefully and responsibly)

* Where did the idea of evolution develop? How has the idea changed over time?

https://kaiserscience.wordpress.com/biology-the-living-environment/evolution/

@edutooters

A fun way to get high school Biology students interested in evolution is to use movies. Many students have seen Tremors, featuring the fictional Graboids. We can ask - if they were real, how could they have evolved? With observation and Socratic questioning, students posit what form of life they could have evolved from - in doing so we cover natural selection, convergent evolution and clades

https://kaiserscience.wordpress.com/2018/06/29/graboids/

#evolution #NGSS #storylines #biology #graboids #clades #phylogenies #teachers