Vocabulary
A characteristic of an organism, such as eye color or silk flexibility.
What is a trait?
The newly discovered spider species with the strongest silk.
What is Darwin's Bark Spider?
Spider silk is made from these molecules.
What are protein molecules?
Students used this digital tool to explore spider traits
What is the Traits and Reproduction Simulation?
Students watched a video about a real scientist who studies this.
What is spiders or spider silk?
A visible part of an organism like legs, eyes, or silk.
What is a feature?
This property of spider silk is important for medical uses like repairing tendons.
What is silk flexability?
The function of a protein depends on its ______.
What is its structure?
In the simulation, students changed this inside spider cells to see trait changes.
What are proteins?
Scientists studying Darwin’s bark spiders work for this fictional company.
What is Bay Medical Company?
Differences in traits between organisms of the same species.
What is variation?
Even though Darwin’s bark spider babies have the same parents, their silk can still be different. This shows _____.
What is variations in traits?
When protein structures change, this can change.
What are traits?
Changing proteins in the simulation caused changes in this.
What are traits?
Scientists from many different social, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds work in this field.
What is science or engineering?
The job or role something does.
What is function?
Spider silk might one day help doctors repair this body part.
What are tendons?
Protein molecules connect with other proteins to form this.
What is spider silk?
Students used the simulation to observe differences between spiders called this.
What is variation?
Scientists study spider traits to understand how they might help this field.
What is medicine?
The shape or arrangement of parts in something like a protein.
What is structure?
Different spiders can make many different types of this material.
What is silk?
The scientific idea that the shape of something affects what it does.
What is structure and function?
Students used a special sheet to draw and explain how proteins affect traits.
What is the Traits and Reproduction Modeling Tool?
Darwin’s bark spider offspring can have different silk flexibility even when they have the same parents. Why?
Because differences in the structure of protein molecules cause variation in traits.