HS-LS4-4 | Natural Selection and Adaptation

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Construct an explanation based on evidence for how natural selection leads to adaptation of populations.

Clarification statement: Emphasis is on using data to provide evidence for how specific biotic and abiotic differences in ecosystems (such as ranges of seasonal temperature, long-term climate change, acidity, light, geographic barriers, or evolution of other organisms) contribute to a change in gene frequency over time, leading to adaptation of populations.

Performance Level Descriptions

PLDs communicate the knowledge and skills expected of students to demonstrate proficiency in each Learning Standard. NYS assessments classify student performance into one of five levels.

Level 5Level 4Level 3Level 2Level 1

Construct an explanation based on evidence obtained from a variety of reliable sources that identifies cause and effect relationships for how natural selection leads to adaptation of populations and predicts changes relating to gene or trait frequencies.

Construct an explanation based on evidence for how natural selection leads to adaptation of populations.

Construct and/or identify an explanation based on evidence that natural selection leads to adaptation of populations.

Identify an evidence-based explanation that an environmental factor could affect a population (due to a change in gene frequency).

Identify the evidence that an environmental factor can cause a change in a population (gene frequency).

Resources

Examples and discussion of resources for the learning, teaching, and assessment of HS-LS4-4.

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Assessment

What assessment of HS-LS4-4 might look like on a NY state exam.

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NGSS Dimensions

Performance expectation HS-LS4-4 was developed using the following elements from the NRC document A Framework for K-12 Science Education:

Science and Engineering Practices

• Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
  • Construct an explanation based on valid and reliable evidence obtained from a variety of sources (including students’ own investigations, models, theories, simulations, peer review) and the assumption that theories and laws that describe the natural world operate today as they did in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• LS4.C: Adaptation
  • Natural selection leads to adaptation that is, to a population dominated by organisms that are anatomically, behaviorally, and physiologically well suited to survive and reproduce in a specific environment. That is, the differential survival and reproduction of organisms in a population that have an advantageous heritable trait leads to an increase in the proportion of individuals in future generations that have the trait and to a decrease in the proportion of individuals that do not.

Crosscutting Concepts

• Cause and Effect
  • Empirical evidence is required to differentiate between cause and correlation and make claims about specific causes and effects.

Page contributors: Conrad Richman, Caroline Leonard

Biology | HS. Natural Selection and Evolution