Firefly flashes
About this resource
- Appropriate grades
- 6
- Subjects
- science (biology and life science), thinking skills (information literacy)
- Provider
- American Association for the Advancement of Science
Legal
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In this Science Update, students explore how male fireflies show off their best features in courtship displays. Tufts University biologists Sara Lewis and Chris Cratsley found that a firefly’s flash advertises its ability to produce good offspring. The researchers measured minute differences in the length of the fireflies' flashes and found that males with the longest flashes had the best resources for fertilizing a female's eggs. So, female fireflies can tell which suitors have the best reproductive assets by gauging the male's ability to brag about them. Science NetLinks provides a link to the audio file, a written transcript, and questions to engage students in discussion about the mating habits of fireflies and what traits might be desirable in male fireflies. This activity also contains links to Discovery’s “The Mating Game,” which looks at the courtship rituals across the animal kingdom and Pulse of the Planet, a radio show that has done stories on animal mating behavior.
North Carolina Curriculum Alignment
Science (2005)
Grade 6
- Goal 1: The learner will design and conduct investigations to demonstrate an understanding of scientific inquiry.
- Objective 1.01: Identify and create questions and hypotheses that can be answered through scientific investigations.
- Objective 1.05: Analyze evidence to:
- Explain observations.
- Make inferences and predictions.
- Develop the relationship between evidence and explanation.
- Objective 1.08: Use oral and written language to:
- Communicate findings.
- Defend conclusions of scientific investigations.
- Objective 1.09: Use technologies and information systems to:
- Research.
- Gather and analyze data
- Visualize data.
- Disseminate findings to others.
- Objective 1.10: Analyze and evaluate information from a scientifically literate viewpoint by reading, hearing, and/or viewing:
- Scientific text.
- Articles.
- Events in the popular press.
- Goal 7: The learner will conduct investigations and use technologies and information systems to build an understanding of population dynamics.
- Objective 7.06: Investigate processes which, operating over long periods of time, have resulted in the diversity of plant and animal life present today:
- Natural selection.
- Adaptation.
- Objective 7.06: Investigate processes which, operating over long periods of time, have resulted in the diversity of plant and animal life present today:
