Cell Biol Educ 4(3): 181-184 2005
DOI: 10.1187/cbe.05-05-0079
© 2005 American Society for Cell Biology
WWW.Cell Biology Education: Evolution Web Sites
Dennis Liu
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Office of Grants and Special Programs,
4000 Jones Bridge Road, Chevy Chase, MD 20815
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EVOLUTION WEB SITES
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The debate over teaching evolution has once again reached a fever pitch in
the United States. Earnest nineteenth-century clashes between scientific and
religious worldviews have given way to the politically charged arguments of
creation science and now intelligent design. The Web site of the National
Center for Science Education (NCSE;
www.natcenscied.org)
is the online destination for keeping abreast of the cultural battles over
teaching biological evolution. At NCSE, you will not find teaching resources
per se, but information and ideas for keeping evolution alive in the
curriculum. The site contains up-to-date information on legislation and school
board activities nationwide. The site also specializes in debunking
intelligent design arguments.
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Figure 2. The welcoming screen of Understanding Evolution is organized into
"Teaching Evolution" and "Learning Evolution." Printed
by permission of Berkeley Museum of Paleontology.
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However, for those weary of the culture wars, it might be best to ease into
the topic by first viewing an animation at
Trollart.com
(www.trollart.com/evo.html)
of how humans evolved from single-celled organisms
(Figure 1). You will also find
a 12-step program for evolving into a human, illustrated in the bold graphic
style that embodies artist Ray Troll's slightly twisted love of nature. I will
emphasize three Web sites in this review but include a longer list at the end.
Most evolution Web sites include links to other useful sites as well.
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY'S UNDERSTANDING EVOLUTION
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http://evolution.berkeley.edu
The intrinsic challenge of teaching the topic sometimes gets lost in the
cultural arguments about evolution. Controversy aside, evolution is
challenging subject matter to teach well. Trolling the Web for resources to
support evolution education requires sifting through virtual reams of
unproductive and even toxic links, like David Duke's European-American page,
found when searching "genes and evolution." Fortunately, there are
quality Web sites that support the teaching of evolution.
The Understanding Evolution Web site (Figures
2,3,4)
is a scion of the University of California—Berkeley Museum of
Paleontology
(www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibit/exhibits.html).
For years, the museum has been recognized as an excellent online source of
information on evolution, geology, and phylogeny. For the purposes of
supporting education in evolution, the Berkeley group wisely elected to
produce a more self-contained Web site full of resources and teacher support
features. The majority of the content is aimed at a high school level, but
there is good support for adapting learning modules to lower grade levels. A
sizable portion of the materials would translate well to the undergraduate
level.
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Figure 3. Understanding Evolution features bold, colorful graphics and interactive
features. Printed by permission of Berkeley Museum of Paleontology.
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Figure 4. Understanding Evolution is part of the larger Berkeley Museum of
Paleontology Web site that features photographs of fossils and other research
materials. Printed by permission of Berkeley Museum of Paleontology.
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Materials on the Berkeley site are organized into optional teaching and
learning paths. Under "Learning Evolution," one can follow a
linear path of Nature of Science. Evolution 101. Evidence. Relevance of
Evolution. Misconceptions. History of Evolutionary Thought. Under each major
topic are many subtopics and various interactive learning modules. For
example, "What Did T. rex Taste Like?" introduces the
concept of a common origin for all life and how the relationships among
various groups of organisms can be organized. Understanding life's family tree
can help answer comic but engaging questions, such as guessing the taste of a
Tyrannosaurus rex T-bone, while driving home some profound biology.
Different versions of the activity and ancillary materials support adoption at
different educational levels.
The Web site features bold, clear graphics, with concise text and engaging
interactivity. While progressing through the materials, there are ample
opportunities to take side paths or even major diversions into the larger
museum Web site. Useful quizzes and tips to teachers are interspersed
throughout, along with relevant additional resources, including outside
links.
Web site contents are displayed along the page banner in a nested,
"bread crumb" fashion to aid navigation and orientation in the
large Web site. For example, nested under "Lines of Evidence" is
"Evidence by Example," and then further nested is
"Experiments." John Endler's famous guppies are featured, as are
his observations and experiments in the native ponds of Trinidad. There is a
link from there to "Mechanisms of Microevolution," highlighting
Endler's artificial selection lab experiments on the same guppies.
Understanding Evolution benefits from its close ties to the larger museum
Web site, because the hyperlinks facilitate moving from the engaging, cartoon
style of Understanding Evolution to elements of the larger museum Web site
more directly tied to the world of research science. For example, a large
specimen collection with good photographic representation helps students move
from cartoons to real fossils and other data.
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PBS-WGBH BOSTON'S EVOLUTION
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution
Another large collection of evolution resources can be found on the Web
pages of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television network
(Figure 5). Produced by Boston
PBS affiliate WGBH, Evolution is companion to the TV series that first aired
in 2001. Unlike most Web sites associated with a television broadcast, WGBH's
site is truly a rich educational resource and includes materials that go well
beyond simply supporting the viewing of the TV series. The Web site content
stands on its own as a valuable resource independent of the series.
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Figure 5. The WGBH Evolution Web site offers materials that complement and go beyond
the PBS television series. Printed by permission of WGBH Boston.
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Figure 6. "Sex and the Single Guppy" lets a learner set the selective
conditions for generating virtual guppy populations. Printed by permission of
WGBH Boston.
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The WGBH Web site has rich graphics with some highly interactive features.
For example, guppies are used to illustrate points about adaptation and
natural selection (Figure 6).
The guppy feature is very engaging, encouraging the learner to generate
simulated guppy populations of varying composition, under different selective
pressures, and to consider multiple hypotheses. I generated several virtual
guppy populations. I first started with a population evenly divided between
drab and colorful male guppies. I cut the simulation off after just four
generations, and the population was fairly evenly distributed across a
spectrum from drab to colorful male fish. I ran the same starting parameters
again and this time went for lunch. After 64 generations (3,228 simulated
weeks), I had 220 guppies in my pool, and they were now 100% maximally drab
because of intense predatory pressure. For another experiment, I started with
a population of drab males and weak predation pressure. I wandered down the
hall for a meeting, and when I returned, 521 virtual weeks later, 15
generations had passed, and all the drab fish had been replaced with brilliant
progeny. These virtual experiments could be useful student exercises and good
supplements to wet-lab experiments.
Despite some engaging online learning modules, at first I found the Web
site somewhat difficult and distracting to navigate. However, by shortcutting
to the "library" section, most of the resources can be found
topically arranged in a manner useful to an instructor. Many gems can be
unearthed by browsing the Web site. For example, under "Evolution
Revolution" (a social-intellectual timeline), I found the following
quote: "It is indeed remarkable that this theory [evolution] has been
progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in
various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated,
of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a
significant argument in favour of this theory." These words were written
in 1996 by Pope John Paul II. One can also compare the results of Gallup polls
across the decades, revealing surprisingly little change in American attitudes
concerning evolution. Nearly half of those polled believe in special creation
for humans, only a tenth believe human evolution followed completely natural
mechanisms, and 35%-40% believe in god-guided evolution (1982-2001). There are
also some well-chosen excerpts from Darwin's diary that are both enlightening
and highly entertaining.
My path of exploration gives an indication of the breadth of the Web site:
"Evolution Home". "Teachers and Students".
"Evolution Library". "Evolution of Diversity".
"An Origin of Species" (fictitious birds). "Coral Reef
Connections". "All in the Family" (cladistics). "Is
Intelligent Life Inevitable" (opinion poll). "Darwin"
(including journal excerpts). "Evolution Revolution"
(social-intellectual timeline). "Sex and the Single Guppy".
"Origins of Humankind". "Riddle of the Bones".
Throughout the pages are nice lists of subtopics, external links, and lists of
related links within the Web site. The "Evolution Library" indexes
the materials as follows: "What Is Science" (39 items), "The
Age of Darwin" (71 items), "Adaptation and Natural
Selection" (87 items), "History of Life" (101 items),
"Evolution of Diversity" (59 items), "Evidence for
Evolution" (117 items), "Human Evolution" (78 items),
"Why Evolution Matters" (85 items), and a glossary.
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TREE OF LIFE WEB PROJECT—A CONSORTIUM HOSTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA LIBRARY
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http://www.tolweb.org
Evolution is a topic nearly as multifaceted and diverse as... as life
itself. Therefore, why not visit a Web site that features our magnificent tree
of life? The Tree of Life Web Project (ToLweb) is an open consortium of sorts,
hosted by the University of Arizona Library. Considering that ToLweb seeks to
collect information for all life on earth, the site
(Figure 7) benefits from
superior organization and tools to help readers utilize pages contributed by
experts from around the world. ToLweb features clever navigation that provides
a lesson in its own right about how life is organized and related. At the home
page, visitors are invited to browse, to learn about evolution and phylogeny,
to contribute media, or to build a tree house. The tree house concept is
particularly welcoming to nonexpert visitors. To encourage schoolteachers and
students in particular to participate, there is a builder's guide and toolkit.
The tree houses are meant to be annotated collections of resources on the Web
site, not original contributions of data and resources. Contribution to ToLweb
is carefully restricted to those with recognized scientific credentials. I
recommend starting with a ToL learning tour, or the Root Page, which is called
"Life on Earth," before you move out along branches and explore.
The Root Pages are entry pages to organisms collected under higher-order
taxonomic groups (e.g., domain and kingdom). Branch and leaf pages contain
more detailed information on smaller groups (e.g., family and genus) as well
as individual species. The Web site administrators have suggested good routes
for exploration, and they feature weekly "learn about" sessions
featuring particular groups. You can even download the entire tree structure
in a static XML format (it is about 30 megabytes).
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Figure 7. The welcoming page of the Tree of Life Web Project is elegant and invites
exploration. Printed by permission of ToLweb.
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I started by searching about a personal favorite, octopus, and found 83
entries, including the taxonomic family Octopodidae. I found
beautiful photos and great information, including how little is known about
the complete diversity of what I think of as a highly visible group. Under
"Containing Groups" on the right-side navigation, I saw
Octopodidae grouped under Octopoda, Octopodiformes,
Mollusca, and of course Cephalopoda. I went to taxonomic class
Cephalopoda and explored related animals. After learning about various
cephalopods, I browsed the branches of family Octopodidae and
eventually found the bizarre group represented by a single living species
called the vampire squid, "a phylogenetic relict [that] possesses
features of both octopods and decapods." Multimedia features showed me
how it swims and where in the world it lives.
The "random page" button accesses a Web page at random, and
it's an interesting tool for making unexpected discoveries. Assigning a
combination of directed exploration and random navigation might be useful for
designing an assignment. The "random page" button could be used as
a sampling method assessment. For example, students could be told to click the
"random page" button five times and draw the tree showing the
relationship among the five randomly selected species.
The Web site is very much a work in progress, which again is a lesson about
biodiversity on our planet and how inadequately cataloged and documented it
is. I look forward to watching this site grow over the years. The site can
accept movies, but so far there are very few. Someday I'd hope to see a tree
house featuring movies of comparative locomotion among tetrapods, for example.
I found ToLweb so rich and useful that I'm tempted to make it my browser
home.
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OTHER EVOLUTION WEBSITES
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The World Wide Web is loaded with other excellent Web sites covering the
topic of biological evolution, and many are linked to the pages of the Web
sites reviewed above. Students, like most humans, tend to be most interested
in themselves, and there are some excellent Web sites covering human
evolution.
- The DNAinteractive Web site, affiliated with Cold Spring Harbor Labs, has a
very good section on Human Origins
(http://www.dnai.org/d/index.html?m=4).
- Action BioScience
(http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution)
has excellent resources, primarily articles aimed at a college-level
audience.
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute's BioInteractive Web site
(http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive)
has an animation called "Evolution of the Y Chromosome" that
charts the Y chromosome's many changes over its long history as a mammalian
sex chromosome.
- Human Evolution: The Fossil Evidence in 3D
(http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/#)
features three-dimensional models of primate skulls that can be rotated for
comparison.
- The Becoming Human Web site
(http://www.becominghuman.org)
of the Institute of Human Origins features a documentary film and other
resources.
- The Human Origins Program
(http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/)
of the Smithsonian Institution has an excellent collection of skulls that can
be viewed online.
- The Genographic Project
(http://www5.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/),
recently launched by National Geographic, intends to analyze DNA from 100,000
people from all parts of the world to better understand the origins and
migration patterns of modern humans. Visitors are encouraged to purchase a DNA
test kit and participate.
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FOOTNOTES
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Comments on this review and suggestions of other valuable Web sites for
learning about evolution are most welcome. Please send comments to Dennis Liu
at
dliu{at}hhmi.org
or, even better, visit the CBE discussion forum
(http://www.cellbioed.org/discussion/public/main.cfm)
to share your comments with other readers of Cell Biology
Education.
Address correspondence to: Dennis Liu
(dliu{at}hhmi.org).
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EVOLUTION WEB SITES
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA...
