Harvard Museum of Natural History

It’s not just morphology - how an organism looks - that can be affected by natural selection. It’s also how the species behaves. A species’ behavior can also affect its ability to survive, and thus be the result of evolution. 

Watch the video below and consider the following questions.

What are some examples of behaviors that help frogs survive in challenging environments?

What does it mean to be a direct developing frog? Why would this be an advantage compared to having a tadpole stage? 

What does Mara study? What surprising finding did she uncover?

Natural Selection of Behavior

Natural History Collections and How They Are Used: Video

Observing Frogs through Sketching 

Making a Claim About your Frog

Making Sense of Morphologies and Adaptations

Review the diverse group of frogs that are part of this activity.
See additional resources below to access 3-D models of each frog.  

Meet the Frogs

Project Overview


                 Why are there so many different kinds of frogs? How did this diversity arise? This resource kit explores these questions, using instructional videos, sketching activities, and careful observation of 3-D models printed from actual frogs chosen from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology Herpetology Collection.

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

Frogs in 3-D

Natural Selection of Behavior