Photo by Robert Boston
(From left) Jaray Brady, Sarah Buckingham and Raquel Ashley, students at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, participate in an exercise in natural selection during a visit to the School of Medicine Sept. 14. The students used forks, chopsticks and spoons to pick up different sizes of beans to simulate trait variation and differential survival within a population of birds. Students competed against one another for food over multiple rounds (generations) and observed how natural selection can alter the frequency of different traits over time within a population. The activities were organized by the Young Scientist Program —Evolution/Genetics/Genomics Teaching Team.