Dear all, At the end of last week I posted a message asking for ideas for Evolution practicals. Judging from the response I got this is something a lot of people would like to share more information on, and teaching Evolution in general. * Sarah Stockwell sent a link to a list she has assembled which has a lot of interesting ideas http://sarahstockwell.wordpress.com/teaching/ * Peter Roessingh suggested using the computer practical Evolutionlab http://www.biologylab.awlonline.com/index.html * Andrew Crawford suggested I read Frey & Lively (2010), Evolution: Education and Outreach, Vol 3, pp 114-120. This journal has free access until 31st Dec, so may be worth looking through for other aspects of teaching Evolution. * Sujal Phadke suggested using the computerised simulation popgen and also sent 3 links http://www.biologyinmotion.com/evol/index.html http://www.biologycorner.com/worksheets.html http://www.thatsevolution.com/ * Amr Aswad suggested looking at selection for C. elegans to learn to avoid pathogenic bacteria. * Sean Werle suggested getting students to make a squash of polytene chromosomes http://people.umass.edu/swerle/reprints/Werle_et_al_2004.pdf * Henry Schaffer suggested using Drosophila, students cross Drosophila and count the progeny in order to estimate the heritability of a recessive lethal allele, which also gives heterozygote advantage. He says that he then asks the students to plug their estimates into http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/gn412/select- sb.html, then click on "Plot values". There is some background and discussion for the instructor is at http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/gn/ex/select-sb- disc.html He also suggested this exercise on drift http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/gn/ex/mit- eve.html * Christophe Boete suggested these 2 websites http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evohome.html and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/educators/index.html * I decided that I would get students to investigate sexual selection for hissing and agonistic behaviours in hissing cockroaches, as this model includes aspects of female choice and male-male competition. Thank-you for all your suggestions and I hope others find this list useful, Judith Dr Judith Lock School of Biological Sciences Life Sciences Building 85 University of Southampton Highfield Campus Southampton SO17 1BJ "Lock J.E."